146 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



than to vie with the management of the creameries, butter fac- 

 tories and milk factories to compel the slack, filthy dairymen to 

 reform and be decent and clean or go out of the business. I 

 thank you all for your kind attention and I give you all a most 

 cordial invitation to visit my farm in Palmyra, and see for your- 

 selves the noble black and whites and when you do I am sure 

 that you will say the Holstein cow is the aristocrat of the farm 

 yard and needs no defense, but is fully able to defend herself 

 against all invaders. 



DAIRY BREEDING. 

 By Hon. Z. A. Gilbert, North Greene. 



It is of the highest importance that dairymen should breed 

 and raise the cows needed to replenish their herds. With the 

 dairyman, as wath all other farmers, improvement should ever 

 be an object in view. He should strive each year to exceed the 

 results reached in the year preceding. Hence he should aim to 

 have the cows he breeds and grows excel those whose places 

 they take. Those who are breeding and growing stock have 

 learned that this is not a simple problem. To breed from the 

 best is an axiom all can endorse, but we w^ho have long been in 

 the business have learned there are many disappointments along 

 the way, and that improvement is slow and decidedly uncertain. 

 Breeding from the best does not always produce offspring equal 

 to the animals from which they were bred, to say nothing of 

 improvement. Hence the number of superior cows in a herd 

 increases slowly. 



Breeders of dairy stock, so far as I am read up in the busi- 

 ness, in their desire for better cows, keep their efforts centered 

 on a single object — they are after more milk. All other factors 

 involved are lost sight of in the effort to breed or obtain cows 

 that will produce more. In the coupling of breeding animals 

 this has been the sole thought. 



In the feeding and care of the cows now in the dairy herds 

 the chief concern is more milk. In the compounding of rations, 

 now so attentively studied, more milk is the only thing thought 



