504 MILCH COWS.

calf will bear hard keep better than any kind of stock, and the idea is as generally followed up in practice: but it is inconceivable, that a pregnant animal, with her growing burden to support, should not require the most nourishing food. We do but deceive ourselves; we should be better paid for good keep, than for bad, even when sale is the ob- ject, as a good price is usually allowed for con- dition. By preserving the constitutional stamina of the animal firm and uninjured, we should be well rewarded with finer stock, more milk, and greater aptitude to fatten; which, if it needed any illustration, is amply proved by the superior stock of regular dairies, where the winter-keep is plen- tiful and of proper nutriment. The change from the succulent herbage of summer, to the dry, in- nutritious fodder of the straw-yard, ruins the con. stitution, and mars the produce of milch-beasts; neither good milk, nor good manure must be ex- pected from dry straw; and it is scarcely possible to keep a milking-animal too well. I have known a farmer’s five cows in January, produce less than a pound and a half of butter per week each, some weeks not more than three quarters each; surely it would have been more to his interest, to have well- kept one good milch cow, or two at most, and to have fed off his surplus straw, with young grazing-

-cattle, or lean beasts.

Distance of markets, nature of the keep, and still more, custom of the country, determine to what particular use cows are applied, whether to the butter-dairy, the cheese, suckling calves, or to breeding solely, as in Lincolnshire. The most

profit-