.

[Illustration: BUYING CATTLE.]

The most natural, and of course the healthiest, food for milch cows in
summer, is the green grass of the pastures; and when these fail from
drought or over-stocking, the complement of nourishment may be made up
with green clover, green oats, barley, millet, or corn-fodder and
cabbage-leaves, or other succulent vegetables; and if these are wanting,
the deficiency may be partly supplied with shorts, Indian-meal, linseed
or cotton-seed meal. Green grass is more nutritious than hay, which
always loses somewhat of its nutritive properties in curing; the amount
of the loss depending chiefly on the mode of curing, and the length of
exposure to sun and rain. But, apart from this, grass is more easily and
completely digested than hay, though the digestion of the latter may be
greatly aided by cutting and moistening, or steaming; and by this means
it is rendered more readily available, and hence far better adapted to
promote a large secretion of milk--a fact too often overlooked even by
many intelligent farmers.

In autumn, the best feed will be the grasses of the pastures, so far as
they are available, green-corn fodder, cabbage, carrot, and turnip
leaves, and an addition of meal or shorts. Toward the middle of autumn,
the cows fed in the pastures will require to be housed regularly at
night, especially in the more northern latitudes, and put, in part at
least, upon hay. But every farmer knows that it is not judicious to feed
out the best part of his hay when his cattle are first put into the
barn, and that he should not feed so well in the early part of winter
that he cannot feed better as the winter advances.

At the same time, it should always be borne in mind that the change from
grass to a poor quality of hay or straw, for cows in milk, should not be
too sudden. A poor quality of dry hay is far less palatable in the early
part of winter, after the cows are taken from grass, than at a later
period; and, if it is resorted to with milch cows, will invariably lead
to a falling off in the milk, which no good feed can afterward wholly
restore.

It is desirable, therefore, for the farmer to know what can be used
instead of his best English or upland meadow hay, and yet not suffer any
greater loss in the flow of milk, or in condition, than is absolutely
necessary. In some sections of the Eastern States, the best quality of
swale hay will be used; and the composition of that is as variable as