DAIRY MEETING. 1 35 



the old native stock and the foreigners we imported stand the 

 strain of confinement, high feeding, and heavy milk yielding? 



We remember the law in breeding, that when one organ or 

 function is highly developed, it is done at the expense or weak- 

 ening of other organs. The dairy cow is valuable, not because 

 she yields heavily and economically for a week, or a year, but 

 because she can do it for many years. She must work and last. 

 She must have inherited constitution to do it, and good constitu- 

 tions are not inherited from weak parents. 



Last year I visited the Ayrshires on the farms in Scotland 

 where the breed originated, and studied the conditions which 

 caused their origin and development into one of the hardiest and 

 most profitable breeds the dairy world has ever had. I learned 

 that the climate of Scotland is mild enough so that the hills are 

 not often covered long so deep with snow that the cattle cannot 

 dig down to the grass. All stock are fed daily with hay when 

 they need it. The cows are put in barns during nights and 

 storms in winter, and the heifers have open sheds out in the 

 pastures which they can go into at will, but they are never shut 

 in. Some of the herds are milked ten months of the year, and 

 others calve in April and go dry in November. Some of the 

 best herds I visited are not milked in winter but are used in 

 summer cheesemaking. 



The heifers get two or three pounds of cake daily in winter. 

 In summer they get no cake or grain, but an abundance of suc- 

 culent food from the pastures that are kept green to the hill tops, 

 by top-dressings of slag and potash, and the mists and rains of 

 that moist climate. 



Everywhere the stock was strong and vigorous with every 

 evidence of large milking capacities. The mossy coats which 

 prevailed showed plainly their descent from the old shaggy High- 

 land cattle that to this day spend the winters out on the Scottish 

 hills. 



I went to Guernsey and Jersey and found those little, low- 

 lying, wind-swept islands, divided by earth banks, hedges and 

 copses, into small lots and fields, and there, in the shelter of those 

 artificial protections the Jersey and Guernsey cattle and their 

 ancestors have lived for two centures or more. 



The barns are of stone. They are small and dark and have 

 stone floors. The cows are in them only during storms and 



