Fisherman & Farmer

CHANGE IN DAIRY METHOD.

Of late years the whole practice of dairying has changed. It used to be that cows were pastured through the summer, and the butter was packed away for sale late in the fall or in the winter. Then the buyers went around and bought up the stock made in the summer. The cows were dry by the first snowfall and were merely kept alive through the winter and turned out on the fresh grass in the spring. There are many farmers who got so deep in this old rut that they could not see out of it and notice that they were left behind, and were going on alone, and quite out of sight of their wide awake neighbors. And they are still plodding along in the same seclusion. But others on the look-out for improvements changed their method and management, and are making their cows work and make profit every day in the year that is possible, and for the time they must rest this is chosen when it costs the least for feeding. Thus winter dairying is the basis of the new practice, and by high feeding at this season and most improved methods, butter is made for sale fresh from the dairy, or is packed for sale in the summer, when the cows can rest at the least cost. Butter may be made better and more cheaply in the winter than in the summer by the use of the modern apparatus, and it is far easier to keep the milk warm by fire at this season than it is to keep it cold in the summer by the use of ice. And thus winter dairying smudge to fight off the flies and all the disagreeable effects of the hot weather of the summer season, not to mention the ill effect on the cows themselves of the exposure in the average dairy to the heat, will be left for the poor and ignorant dairyman to endure. -American Dairyman.