70 AGRICUI.TURE; OF MAIN^. 



do a little better in New England, where the average is five years. 

 That means that every five years we have to replace our present 

 herd with another. Are we going to buy it or are we going to 

 breed it? If you pay $75 for a cow and sell her for $25 at the 

 end of five years, there is a depreciation of $50. If she has 

 produced 250 pounds of butter a year, in five years she has 

 produced 1,250 pounds, which means that you have got to 

 deduct four cents from the income from each pound of butter 

 which that cow produced, to make good the loss from deprecia- 

 tion. That is a serious drain upon the profits of the dairy. 

 It is something which the ordinary man does not take into con- 

 sideration. We think if a cow pays for her food and two or 

 three cents more a day, we are making a profit. We do not 

 stop to think that we have got to replace that cow. If the 

 average cow lives four years she will produce four calves, and 

 two of them on the average will be males and two of them 

 females. So that* we will need about every other heifer calf 

 which is produced in the herd, or we need two calves from every 

 other cow. You want the heifer calves from the best half of 

 the herd. There is the starting point in breeding, first to find 

 out the best cows of your herd, then make up your mind to raise 

 the heifer calves from every other cow. Now shall we breed 

 them or buy them? If I were to convert you all to the necessity 

 of good cows and you should start out to get them, you could 

 not find them. There are not enough of them. I think on the 

 whole we can get cows with greater certainty by breeding them. 

 I do not know what the southern New England farmers who 

 sell so much of their milk are going to do to get their cows. 

 They do not raise their calves. Up here in Maine where so 

 many of you are making butter and have skim-milk, you can 

 raise calves. The one thought I want to present to you is this : 

 You must attempt to graft on to your herds the superior quali- 

 ties of an improved blood, in other words, use a pure bred sire. 

 Why? Simply because of this principle, — in breeding the off- 

 spring inherits on the average about half of his qualities from 

 his parents and half from his ancestors, one-fourth from the 

 grandparents, one-eighth from the great grandparents, and one- 

 sixteenth from the great, great grandparents. Now suppose 

 you use a grade sire and you select him from the best cow in 



