DAIRY me;e;ting. 165 



increase instead of decrease. We are not, as a rule, taking into 

 consideration the heifer as she is ; by which I mean the abnormal 

 make-up of her physical being which we have bred her into and 

 fed her into. We have looked for the large mammary gland and 

 milk veins and failed to consider that the reproductive organs 

 were in close correlation with them. As we have bred and fed for 

 the excessively large milk function, we have to an extent weak- 

 ened or dwarfed the organs that are so closely related to the 

 said glands. We must not lose sight of these facts or we can- 

 not escape barrenness and abortion in our herds. It is a mis- 

 taken idea that many entertain when they think that early breed- 

 ing necessarily weakens constitutional vigor or seriously dwarfs 

 the size. While it is true under a restricted or insufficient or 

 improper diet, whenever a proper and generous system of feed- 

 ing has been practiced, there is no evidence to sustain that belief, 

 neither do we find animals seriously dwarfed in size when the 

 age for maturity arrives. In our dairy operations we have made 

 rapid advancement in some things and stood practically where 

 our fathers stood in other things. As was stated in the begin- 

 ning, we have many of us failed to see that there are two sets 

 of organism in every female, the rei^roductive and the one which 

 furnishes the nourishment for the product of the first named. 

 Our aim has been to develop the organ which secrets the nourish- 

 ment (mammary gland) and we have not given proper atten- 

 tion to the organ which furnishes the being for the mammary 

 gland to nourish. We are overlooking the fact that all organs 

 in their regular order need developing. As a child grows, its 

 limbs require action or they remain dormant; allow the child 

 to move its arms and not its lower limbs, and it never would be 

 strong enough to walk. The same logic holds equally true and 

 can be just as sensibly applied to the reproductive organs in our 

 animals. When nature calls for their being brought into action 

 and this call goes for a year or even in our highly bred dairy 

 animals for a few months unheeded, nature ceases to call, or 

 if she does, it is a feeble call from a dwarfed organ which has 

 not developed as nature designed it to do. To insure a mother 

 and a. long period of motherhood, we cannot ignore the first calls 

 of nature beyond a very limited period, or we must expect bar- 

 renness in our best heifers, and sterility in our cows as soon as 



