PRODUCTION OF MILK. JgJ 



forty-two quarts, wiuc quarts, as you can make it. Milk is now 

 measured by wine quarts. 



There are other examples given of Ayrshire cows. At the fii\st 

 exhibition of the New England Agricultural Society, there were 

 some Ayrshires exhibited from Maine whose record was very re- 

 markable indeed, considering the size of the animal. You have a 

 small animal ; about eight hundred pounds live weight. gives you 

 a pretty respectable Ayrshire cow ; and it is claimed, and I believe 

 undisputed, that for the amount of food consumed, the Ayrshire 

 will give more milk than any other breed of cattle. 



I will now pass to the -fourth class — the Jerseys. The Jerseys 

 are a breed long established in the Channel Islands, lying between 

 England and France. They are sometimes called "Aldernays," 

 but the proper name is Jerseys, and that embraces all those ani- 

 mals which are brought from those islands. There is another little 

 island, Guernsey, which differs a little in the character of its animals, 

 but they have one general class of characteristics. They are a 

 small, fine-boned, fine-limbed, and rather nervous and excitable 

 breed of animals, but their leading characteristic is the exceeding 

 richness, most people say, of their milk; but I say, the richness of 

 the color of their milk. It has been laid down as a rule by some 

 writers, that the Jersey milk, although its richness was claimed 

 to be so great, was no richer actually than the Ayrshire or the 

 Devon. I would hardly assert that, but I do assert that a large 

 part of its apparent richness is due to the exceeding richness of 

 color and the fact that the cream so readily and perfectly sepa- 

 rates from the milk. Jersey skim milk is almost always of poor 

 quality ; it is the poorest kind of skim milk; while the Devon skim 

 milk is claimed to be as good as the new milk of other breeds for 

 ordinary household purposes. I have spoken of the price obtained 

 for Jersey butter as a fancy one. I believe it is on record, and 

 not to be disputed, that Mr. Sargent of Brookline, Massachusetts, 

 sold his whole product of butter the past year to a dealer in 

 Boston at $1.15 a pound, and that he sells it to his customers at 

 $1.25; and they are satisfied and glad to get it at that. Other 

 Jersey breeders have to be satisfied with 75 cents per pound, and 

 so on until you come down to the common price which farmers 

 get, twenty-five to thirty or forty cents a pound, just as the 

 quality or the reputation of the dairy may be. 



Now, setting aside this fancy value, the Jerseys, for the high 

 color which they impart to their milk, seem to be worthy of intro- 



