| OCR Text |
Show SHALL THE COW BE " GIVEN A REST? In all the large well handled dairy herds of America and among the good herdsmen the question of "Shall the cow be given a rest," is never considered consider-ed other than that she shall. The idea that we have had in the Western country that when a cow is dry she needs very little to eat is wrong and the sooner we get away from this condition and practice, the better off we will Jieeome and the greater production pro-duction we will get from our dairy cow. To produce milk is just as much a tax on the system of the dairy cow as hard work is on the average draft horse, and for that reason it requires considerable con-siderable energy and nutrients to keep up 'the body. It has been proved beyond question that cows when dry for a month to six weeks are much better producers than if milked within two weeks or a few clay of their calving time. The only chance the herdsman has to get ahead of the cow in feed is when she is not producing milk regularly. At this time there is a good opportunity op-portunity to build up the body of the animal, and if she is anything any-thing like the right kind she immediately im-mediately returns the stored up material in her milk as soon as she freshens. ' Cows that are milked right up to calving, invariably in-variably will have a normol calf in every way, but the detriment detri-ment comes to the mother rather than to the calf. The cow that is not given a rest before calving has a milk flow that is at a much lower level than the cow that is given a rest, and she never reaches a maximum production throughout that period that she otherwise would. She merely dwindles along, giving half her usual amount of milk, and never reaches the same flow that she did in her other lactation periods. |
