The complete Indian housekeeper & cook

It is as difficult to choose a cow as to choose a horse. The size of the udder bears very little relation to her milking powers, the best test for which, after actual trial, is the width of the cow when looked at from behind. If she is wide, and the udder plainly visible, she will be a good milker. A cow gives most milk with her third, fourth, and fifth calves. When a cow calves, do not listen to the cowman’s protestations. Give a warm bran mash, or some linseed meal or ' 104 The Indian Housekeeper and Cook 105 oatmeal or dried gruel, and reduce tlie quantity of bhoosa or chopped straw. A cow before calving must have a reasonable amount of exercise ; but if this is given, there will be no need for all the spices and ghee, the raw sugar and oil, without which the gow-wala predicts instant death. The practice of leaving the calf with its mother is a detestable one, and is at the bottom of half the difficulties attending cow-keeping in India, as it tends to keep these animals in that semi-state of domestication in which, if they give milk one year, they are dry the next. But unless you begin from the beginning, and educate a heifer with her first calf, you must accept defeat on this point. One of the authors once, by dint of great patience, trained two young heifers in the English fashion. The calves, after being licked, were tied in a separate house and never saw their mothers again, being fed in a pail with skim milk, linseed tea, and fresh milk. Great was the dismay of the compound, as two months passed by, and both calves and mothers prospered. Fate, however, sent the author into camp for three weeks, and on lier return she found a grin on that gow-wdla’s face which did not long remain there. Both calves were sucking the mothers, in the absence of hazoor-hi-ikhtya (your honour’s mightiness), by which alone, the man said, they had been reconciled to the unnatural and impious arrangement. On one point, however, firmness will produce the best of results. If the calf dies, insist on the gow-wala making some arrangement to produce milk as before. It can be done by jifitience, and in this, as m most matters in India, it is wisest to adopt the plan followed by the House of Commons in regard to factories consuming their own smoke— that is, give the order, and leave the method to personal ingenuity. 'I'he milk of a cow is usually fit for use on the fourth day: it it stands boiling without turning to curd, butter can be made from it. But from the day the calf is born the cow should be milked regularly after the calf has had a good suck— that is, about five times a day— and the milk brought tor inspection. Gow-walas invariably object to this plan, as tliey do to everything which savours of novelty. They look on the beestings, or first- yellow milk, as their perquisite, ami for this reason will tell the inexperienced mistress giavely that the milk cannot possibly be used for ten days. io6 The Complete Indian