United States or French Polynesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They can be made to give three-fourths of a pint of milk, just after calving, for every ten ounces of hay consumed, if well cared for, and fed in a manner favorable to the secretion of milk. They hold out long in milk, when they have no upper mirrors or tufts. At seven or eight months in calf, they may give from five to eight quarts of milk a day. The THIRD class consists of middling cows.
Heavy milkers should be given one-half pound of Glauber's salts a day or two before calving, and the dose repeated when the cow becomes fresh. Cows affected with milk-fever seldom die if treated promptly. The milk-fever apparatus should be clean, and the air injected filtered.
Milk-fever may, however, be produced by giving cold water immediately after calving, &c. Cows may be attacked immediately or in a few hours after calving; when four or five days have passed, the animal may be considered safe.
There is little risk with a heifer with her first calf, and I never bleed or physic a heifer in calf, because she has not attained her growth. In her case "the additional nutriment goes to increase of size, instead of becoming the foundation of disease." Red-water is also a very fatal complaint among cows. They generally take it about the thirteenth or fourteenth day after calving.
But do not expect to obtain the full yield of a cow the first year after calving. Some of the very best cows are slow to develop their best qualities; and no cow reaches her prime till the age of five or six years. The extreme importance of care and attention to these points cannot be overestimated.
This glacier, which we had noticed during the stay at Peggotty Camp, seemed to be calving almost continuously. I had hoped to get a view of the country ahead of us from the top of the slope, but as the surface became more level beneath our feet, a thick fog drifted down.
During thunderstorms a bit of the wreath is burned on the hearth with a prayer; some of it is given to kine that are sick or calving, and some of it serves to fumigate house and cattle-stall, that man and beast may keep hale and well. Sometimes an old cartwheel is smeared with resin, ignited, and sent rolling down the hill.
I had six heifers bulled when they were one year old. They had all difficulty in calving; three of them required assistance, and were very much torn and lacerated before the calves could be extracted, and the mothers have never attained the size of the other cows in the herd. Nor has the argument much force with me that the one-year-old is surer to stand to the bull than the two-year-old.
Cow's milk, immediately after calving, contains more butter and less caseine than milk produced some time later, when the specific character of ruminants begins to appear in the calf, that is to say, when it commences to graze the milk coagulates in the stomach. As in other mammals, an excess of fat helps digestion by subdividing the caseine and emulsifying it.
It is a very common occurrence that two or three months before calving the vagina protrudes when the cow is lying: when this occurs she should be kept well up behind, else it may bring on premature calving. When the cow calves the danger is over.
Word Of The Day