Care of the Cows

1896

Have you ever watched your cows on a bitter cold day sneak slowly up to the water trough where you have broken the ice and stick her tongue in the cold water several times until she got used to it, then take a little sip and a little more until she could stand no more of it. Then she will walk slowly over the frozen ground until she gets in the shelter of an old wagon, and there with her back humped up she will stand for two or three hours shivering until what feed she has eaten has had time to warm that water up to a living temperature?

How long ought it to take a sensible man to find out where all of his feed is going, no matter whether it is a milk cow or a dry one. Nearly every pound she eats is needed to warm that water, and little is left to repair the body, much less to make milk or fat of. The simplest kind of a heating apparatus will cost not over ten cents a day to heat the water for a small herd twice a day. It will pay for itself twice over during the winter in food it will save and the milk it will allow the cows to make, and it will do the same in adding flesh to the other cattle, especially the young ones.

Then go a step further and buy some boards to build a shed that the poor things may have a dry place to stand and lie down under with a wind break against the cold piercing storms. These are not only acts of humanity, but they appeal directly to the pocketbook. They make the stacks of hay, the corn fodder and the meal bin go nearly twice as far, to say nothing of increasing the profits of the milch cows.

If a liberal allowance of straw, leaves or other trash is scattered under the shed the amount of manure saved will far more than repay the cost and trouble of collecting it, while it greatly adds to the comfort of the animals. If you are not too tired by this time, then get you a sharp butcher's saw and take the horns off dent from the boss cow and steers, and then the younger ones. This is the best time of year to do it, when there are no flies to bother. — Home and Farm.