OCR Text |
Show DAIRYING I. ... - A LIGHT MILK FLOW. A light milk flow is almost invariably invaria-bly preceded by a light feed flow, and this applies to tlic egg, beef, pork and mutton flow as wcM; yes, and to the flow from the soil itself. Let us take the cow for instance. A scrub cow, properly and abundantly fed the year around, will often put more milk into the pail, and more cream into the can than a high priced, special purpose, gilt-edged wairy cow that has been provided with bul little more than her own almost perfect machinery to make butter with. All the difference between many a successful dairyman and the' unsuc-ccsful unsuc-ccsful ones around him is that one gets ample and proper feed to his cows 365 days in the year, and the others do so only when nature attends to the job for them, usually about three months when pasture is at its beat. At this short time, if the pasture is not restricted, the flow of milk is so great that the owner easily falls a victim to the Texas, Virginia or California boomer, who tells of clinKS where "grass is green the year around." (We sometimes wonder f some of our gullable northern farmers farm-ers do not come pretty ncar'y under that head themselves). Now grass car be green, or any other color, but if the milking -cow cannot have all shw can properly masticate and assurri'atp of it, neither she nor her owner can make it into butter. But feed, wc arc-told, sometimes costs more than it can return. True, and here, just here, is where the expertness of the successful stockman comes in. Some farmers say that a hen cats her head off, but she is shut up all summer ,and gets no silage, sil-age, clover leaves, screenings, millet or other cheap desirable food in the winter, only whole, marketable grain. Another says hogs consume mors than they bring; but this man's hogs arc in pens or grasslcss yards, the year around, and mover taste rape, aovcr, or other green, cheap pasture unless for an hour or so a day, perhaps, per-haps, they break out of their confinement. confine-ment. An abundance of feed, And as cheaply grown feed as possible is tlu one thing to which the farmer-stockman shou.'d bend every energy. With the exception of perhaps a few very dry spots, there is not a farm in our territory that cannot be made to provide an abundance of forage for dairy cows, particularly winter forage. Nor is this all. The more forage there is provided and consumed, the greater will the producing capacity of the land so devoted be. It is the one kind of farming that builds up itself and the farm at the same tirra-. Fodder corn and sKagc, oat hay and imillct, rap'c, mangels, turnips and, where possible, pos-sible, clover and alfalfa should be grown on the strongest land and fed out on the same; and more forage crops grown where the resulting enrichment en-richment goes, until every cow, calf, sheep, hen, horse and hog shall not know what short feed or pasture means the year round. Then the butter but-ter and cream will come the year-round year-round instead of for a few weeks only; the egg basket will be a constant con-stant surprise, and the pigs, calves, (Iambs and colts will weigh as they n.cvcr weighed before. |