I36 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



winter nights. The mild climate admits of their spending night 

 and day in summer and most of the winter days in the open air. 



It is the boast of the Jersey and Guernsey people that they have 

 never had tuberculosis among their cattle, and yet they have bred 

 and developed animals that are as sensitive and refined as the 

 thoroughbred horse or the Collie dog. 



During all the years which have been spent in breeding and 

 developing the most perfect butter-making cattle in the world, 

 the Jersey and Guernsey people have never warred with nature; 

 they have never lost sight of the imperative necessity of consti- 

 tution in their animals, but they have preserved it by keeping 

 them in the open air as much as possible and allowing them 

 moderate exercise. They took the old aboriginal stock and 

 warped and molded it to suit their own purposes, but they never 

 dared to interfere with constitution. They fed them on roots, 

 grasses and forage plants that grow in the open fields much of 

 the year in that mild climate, and they became big bellied because 

 of the nature of the food. Careful breeding, gentle treatment, 

 pure air, succulent foods, and moderate grain rations caused the 

 development of the Jersey and Guernsey cows. 



Have we in New England been content to pursue the same 

 course with her? Have we not rather tried to do better by her? 

 Have we not fed her on rich foods up to her full capacity to 

 digest, and sometimes beyond and forced her to her full limit? 

 We have subjected her to high pressure and required her to milk 

 close up to the time of bringing forth her new calf, which far too 

 often has proved to be a weakling, because its mother had been 

 bred and trained to yield her all to her foster son,— the man 

 who reared and treated her so kindly, that he had her love. 



A part of our dairy education was, and many of us have not 

 unlearned it yet, that the shorter time the cow went dry the bet- 

 ter; that "there must be no boarders in the dairy herd ;" and we 

 have acted on that charge, and robbed, not only the unborn 

 calves but ourselves as well. I am thoroughly well satisfied that 

 the cow will yield more milk through life if she is allowed to go 

 dry ten weeks each year, than she will if she is milked longer. 

 One has but to recall some cow that by oversight was not dried 

 off at all, then he will recollect that when her calf was born she 

 did not freshen with as much force as in previous years, and at 

 no time during the vear that ensued did she approach her maxi- 



