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78 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Five hundred gallons of milk per annum from a cow is not an j 

 extravagant estimate. A cow which will give no more than this, i 

 with good treatment, should be reckoned a poor one rather than a S 

 good one, unless the milk itself be of unusual richness, which is * 

 not unfrequently the case. When in Herkimer county, N. Y., ■' 

 during the past season, some dairymen assured me that their herds J 

 of forty to fifty cows averaged a yield of six hundred pounds of i( 

 cheese each without extra feeding ; that with extra feeding up- J 

 wards of seven hundred, and in rare cases, even more than eight ' 

 hundred pounds to a cow had been realized. Others told me that ] 

 the better half, or third, or quarter of their cows produced six 

 hundred pounds each ; and although very great improvements in 

 the method of manufacture have there been adopted within twenty 

 years past, it is not until recently that much attention has been 

 given to breeding with special reference to dairy qualities. Hith- 

 erto they have depended chiefly upon buying the best which could 

 be obtained from other sections. Of late the conviction is rapidly 

 gaining ground, that if they would have reliable cows, they must 

 raise them at home, from such breeds as possess these qualities 

 most fixedly and in the highest degree, so as to be sure of trans- 

 mitting them to their progeny. 



They also informed me that by their style of manufacture, well 

 conducted, nearly or quite three times the weight of cheese could 

 be made from the milk that there could of butter. A dairyman in 

 Franklin county in this State also assured me, as the result of 

 careful observation, that he usually obtained three times as much 

 cheese from a given amount of milk as he could of butter. A dairy 

 farmer of New York who kept an accurate account for the year 

 1853, says, 11,844 gallons made 13, '700 lbs. of pressed curd which 

 shrunk 1,045 lbs. in curing, leaving 12,655 of ripened cheese for mar- 

 ket.* In the above estimates it is rated only as two and a half to one. 

 In regard to the proportion of butter to be obtained from milk, I 

 can only say that six ounces to the gallon is deemed a liberal esti- 

 mate of an average for the season where good cows have good past- 

 urage. Six ounces to the gallon is equal to a pound from ten and 

 two-thirds quarts ; Dr. Voelcker gives the analyses of six samples 

 of milk, each the average of a herd of eight or ten cows at grass, and 

 without any extra food, made at difierent times from August to No- 



* I presume ale measure is referred to — 282 cubic inches to the gallon. 



