RAISING NEAT STOCK. 183 



of oily matter in the food ; and in part upon the amount of exercise 

 which the animal takes, and the warmth of atmosphere in which it 

 is kept. Exercise and cold, by increasing the respiration, eliminate 

 part of the oily matter in the form of carbonic acid and water ; 

 while rest and warmth, by diminishing this drain, favor its passage 

 into the milk. The proportion of casein, on th^ other hand, is 

 increased by exercise ; which would seem to show that this ingre- 

 dient is derived from the disintegration of muscular tissue." The 

 experience of every farmer teaches him that an animal which has 

 a large, heavy, muscular development, and is thus furnished with 

 the means of rapid locomotion, is seldom a good milker. Her 

 digestive apparatus is more devoted to her fleshy fibre than to the 

 preparation of milk. The same may be said of fat and bone. So 

 true is this, that among cattle bred expressly for the stall, the 

 females often furnish hardly milk enough to sustain their own ofl- 

 spring ; and in countries where the bone and muscle of the cow- 

 are developed by labor, her service in the dairy amounts to but 

 little*. • 



It would seem, therefore, that in feeding young animals for the 

 dairy, care should be taken that the young are not so fed as to 

 develop a tendency to great size, either in frame or in adipose 

 tissue ; nor so as to establish in the end, a race which has every 

 faculty except that of producing milk. We have all seen how 

 high feeding of the young has in a few generations, and sometimes 

 in one or two, removed from a family of vigorous, nervous, muscu- 

 lar and active horses, all traces of those characteristics which have 

 given them value. What they had acquired on the homely fare of 

 their native hills, they lost when brought and bred into greater 

 prosperity. The hard and wiry tendon vanished, the elastic and 

 well defined muscle was rounded off into graceful effeminacy, the 

 carcass and adipose tissue had gained the ascendency, through the 

 aid of good living, and a luxurious life from youth upward. Some 

 of us have seen a promising heifer calf, the offspring of a good 

 milker, pampered in its youth, and fed until it became anything 

 but the dairy animal which its ancestry promised. 



We would not advocate a deficiency of food for young dairy 

 stock ; but we would argue against an excess of articles of a highly 

 stimulating quality. The plan of the Ayrshire farmers is undoubt- 

 edly a good one — to take their calves early from the dams, feed 

 them from the dish, and bring them to solid food or pasture as soon 

 as the condition of the young stomach will allow. Instead of 



