THE TREATMENT OF DRY COWS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1199, 22 February 1895, Page 6

THE TREATMENT OF DRY COWS.

It is the usual practice when a cow goes dry to turn her out into a poor and generally over-stocked paddock, where she is expected to recruit her bones and her strength for another milking season. This sort of treatment, says "Thistledown," is unfair to the cow and unprofitable to her owner. When cows are dry they should be given the best grass on the place instead of the worst. After yielding milk for perhaps eight or nine months - the animal's system is worn down and impoverished, and requires building up with good food and nourishment. The cow that is starved during the time she is dry has not that substance within on which she secretes milk, and yields according to her condition. Nature is never deceived, and the farmer who expects to save or gain something by half starving his cows during their dry period is only deluding himself. It pays far better, as experienced dairymen have discovered, to feed the cows just as well when they are dry as when they are milking. The fact has often been noted that when a cow comes in full in flesh and vigour, she invariably holds out well in her milk. She continues to be profitable for a much longer period than if she were poor in condition, and all the while she is milking gives a larger quantity. This is the effect of feeding. A poor, ill-nourished cow, low in condition, does not possess the materials from which milk is produced, just as when the fuel gets scarce the fire goes out. The way dry cows are sometimes treated is not calculated to fill the jvail for any length of time, and yet the cow —honest creature that she is—-though doing her best, is blamed for delinquencies of which she is not guilty. Farmers who want to have lots of milk and butter next summer, and obtain a supply right into the following i winter, are now feeding their clry cows

liberally. If they have not a good pasture paddock for them, they take care to provide them with extra food in the shape of ensilage, or roots, or chaff and bran, or other cheap grains.