t fields and
woods, if not on the side of a common. To pretend to tell a country
labourer how to build a shed for a cow, how to stick it up against the end
of his house, or to make it an independent erection; or to dwell on the
materials, where poles, rods, wattles, rushes, furze, heath, and
cooper-chips, are all to be gotten by him for nothing or next to nothing,
would be useless; because a man who, thus situated, can be at any loss for
a shed for his cow, is not only unfit to keep a cow, but unfit to keep a
cat. The warmer the shed is the better it is. The floor should _slope_,
but not too much. There are _stones_, of some sort or other, every-where,
and about six wheel-barrow-fulls will _pave_ the shed, a thing to be by no
means neglected. A broad trough, or box, fixed up at the head of the cow,
is the thing to give her food in; and she should be fed three times a day,
at least; always at _day-light_ and at _sun-set_. It is not _absolutely
necessary_ that a cow ever quit her shed, except just at calving time, or
when taken to the bull. In the former case the time is, nine times out of
ten, known to within forty-eight hours. Any enclosed field or place will
do for her during a day or two; and for such purpose, if there be not room
at home, no man will refuse place for her in a fallow field. It will,
however, be good, where there is no _common_ to turn her out upon, to have
her led by a string, two or three times a week, which may be done by a
child only five years old, to graze, or pick, along the sides of roads and
lanes. Where there is a _common_, she will, of course, be turned out in
the day time, except in very wet or severe weather; and in a case like
this, a smaller quantity of ground will suffice for the keeping of her.
According to the present practice, a miserable "_tallet_" of bad hay is,
in such cases, the winter provision for the cow. It can scarcely be called
food; and the consequence is, the cow is both _dry_ and _lousy_ nearly
half the year; instead of being dry only about fifteen days before
calving, and being sleek and lusty at the end of the winter, to which a
_warm lodging_ greatly contributes. For, observe, if you keep a cow, any
time between September and June, out in a field or yard, to endure the
chances of the weather, she will not, though she have food precisely the
same in quantity and quality, yield above _two-thirds_ as much as if she
were lodged in house; and in _wet_ weather she will not yie