State Agricultural Society. 553 



PRIZE ESSAY ON JERSEY CATTLE. 



BY L. S. HARDIN. 



It is only within the last half dozen years that the Jersey cow has 

 come prominently before the American public. To say in that short 

 time she has won golden opinions from troops of friends, is but a beg- 

 garly return for the many obligations we are under to her. 



She is rapidly teaching us to eat a better article of butter, to make it 

 with less cost, of a much finer quality, and from a smaller quantity of 

 milk, to say nothing of her having enlisted many of the most intelligent 

 agricultural minds of the country in behalf of the important art of 

 cattle breeding. 



To estimate her at her proper value, she should be judged from two 

 points of view: first, as an agent in the production of cream and butter; 

 and, secondl}^, as a thoroughbred. 



There is little danger of over-estimating the importance of her char- 

 acter in this first particular. One of our best writers upon dairy sub- 

 jects estimates the present annual yield of butter in the United States 

 at seven hundred millions of pounds. At fifteen cents a pound, it is 

 worth one hundred and five million dollars; at fifty cents a pound, three 

 hundred and fifty million dollars. These figures, marking the extremes 

 of current prices paid for butter, show a premium offered by the con- 

 sumers of two hundred and fortj'-five million dollars as an incentive to 

 improvement in butter making, to say nothing of top prices at one dol- 

 lar and twenty-five cents a pound. 



The expense of making the higher grades of butter is not over ten 

 cents a pound extra, while the difference in price, in some instances, 

 reaches one dollar and ten cents a pound. Surely, here is sufficient in- 

 ducement for dairymen to use every means in their power to improve 

 the quality of their butter product. 



That the Jersey cow is an important agent in accomplishing the end 

 in view, is rapidly becoming an acknowledged fact. She not only pro- 

 duces milk from which butter can be made of a finer and more con- 

 sistent texture, but her presence in the herd seems to arouse the 

 ambition of her owner, so that it is rare indeed that the butter from a 

 herd of Jerseys does not bring the highest prices, and often double the 

 price of any other butter in the market. 



The Jersey cow, simply as a dairy animal, needs no other treatment 

 than should be bestowed upon dairy animals of any other breed. Being 

 somewhat small of stature, and trained to stick to her work, year in and 

 year out, though her exceptional weekly records stand among the best, 

 yet her forte is not so much in giving a large yield of butter, for a few 



70— (agri) 



