80 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



for domestic animals and a pride in the highest development of 

 their excellencies. To find this missing link by stimulating a 

 love for domestic live stock should be one of our efforts. Hav- 

 ing this view of the case we are working to cooperate with our 

 provincial government by encouraging these men who are not 

 specialists to keep a class of cows that will make milk, and make 

 it more profitably in some cases than the cow of special dairy 

 breeding, and at the same time will drop a calf which will sell for 

 a good price for veal, or to raise for a beef animal. 



I am not here as an exponent of the dual purpose animal, and 

 yet I believe the keeping of these cows, to some extent, may work 

 out better for the country than to place special cows among men 

 who are not specialists. The farmers wall gradually come 

 around to the dairy end of it, I think quicker in this way than 

 if an attempt is made to have them keep nothing but special 

 dairy stock. In the St. John valley years ago we had largely 

 Shorthorn grades. We were keeping on many farms forty or 

 fifty head of cattle where today only three or four cows are kept. 

 Those men were not and are not today special dairymen, but they 

 were willing to feed cattle. Another point was that they had 

 rough fodder and rough pasturage, which cannot be profitably 

 utilized in forcing the dairy cow to her highest production, but 

 it will grow young stock. We can turn off cattle in two or three 

 years which have cost us practically nothing so far as the con- 

 centrated foods are concerned, and after they have utilized the 

 coarse foods and the rough pastures wq can top them off with a 

 small amount of grain and sell them at a good profit. When 

 we can find men situated as those men are, who are not prepared 

 to milk 30 or 40 cows but who will milk from six to twelve and 

 keep a number of dry cattle, I think we can intersperse stock 

 raising with dairying to the advantage of the farmer, the country 

 and the dairy industry. 



Right here I may be pardoned for dropping a suggestion in 

 relation to keeping up the fertility of the land. By growing 

 potatoes year after year I do not think we are getting the best 

 results. I think you should adopt a short rotation. After the 

 potato crop is lifted cultivate the land that fall and the next 

 spring sow a crop of grain, seeding to clover. What will you 

 do with the crop of grain ? Some of you may sell it to the lum- 

 ber camps or dispose of it in other ways. Our people are largely 



