Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

CATTLE.
stimulus. If the season and the convenience of the farmer will
admit of it, she will be better at pasture, at least for some hours in
the day, than altogether confined to the cow-house.
At a somewhat uncertain period before she calves; there will be
a new secretion of milk for the expected little one ; and under the
notion of somewhat recruiting her strength, in order better to enable
her to discharge her new duty, but more from the uniform testimony
of experience that there is danger of local inflammation and of
general fever, garget in the udder, and puerperal fever, if the new
milk descends while the old milk continues to flow, it has been usual
to let the cow go dry for some period before parturition. Farmers
and breeders have been strangely divided as to the length of this
period. It must be decided by circumstances. A cow in good condition
may be milked much longerjban a poor one. Her abundance
of food renders a period of respite almost unnecessary ; and all that
needs to be taken care of is that the old milk should be fairly gone
before the new milk springs. In such a cow, while there is danger
of inflammation from the sudden rush of new milk into a bag already
occupied, there is also considerable danger of indurations and tumors
in the teats from the habit of secretion being too tong suspended.
The emaciated and overmilked beast, however, must rest awhile before
she can again advantageously discharge the duties of a mother.
Were the period of pregnancy of equal length at all times and
in all cows, the one that has been well fed might be milked until
within a fortnight or three weeks of parturition ; while a holiday
of two months should be granted to the poorer beast ;
but as there
is much irregularity about this, it may be prudent to take a month
or five weeks as the average period.
The process of parturition is one that is necessarily accompanied
by a great deal of febrile excitement ; and therefore when it nearly
approaches, not only should a little care be taken to lessen the
quantity of food, and to remove that which is of a stimulating
nature, but a mild dose of physic, and a bleeding regulated by the
condition of the' animal, will be very proper precautionary measures.
A moderately open state of the bowels is necessary at the period
flf parturition in the cow. During the whole time of pregnancy
her enormous stomachs sufficiently press upon and confine the womb
and that pressure may be productive of injurious and fatal consequences,
if at this period the rumen is suffered to be distended by
unnutritious food, or the manyplus takes on that hardened state
to which it is occasionally subject. Breeders have been sadly neg-
ligent here.
NATURAL LABOR.
The springing of the udder, or the rapid enlargement of it from
the renewed secretion of milk—the enlargement of the external
;