THE OAlvES COW. 175 



town, there has been no improvement in milch cattle?" 

 Well, sir, at the end of his essay, to clinch the argument, he 

 brought up the Oakes cow. I find that is generally the way 

 -with gentlemen. After having exhausted the subject, as they 

 think, they bring in the Oakes cow to clinch the argument. 

 That Oakes cow has been to me, I may say, a bugbear. I 

 have suffered from that cow. I have had what you might 

 call "the uight cow," which is a species of nightmare, and 

 after reading the report of Dr. Loring's remarks, I said to 

 myself, " I will look into this matter and see what the Oakes 

 cow has done, and the next man who says anything to me 

 about that cow, I will ask him, ' Have you ever heard what the 

 Oakes cow did?'" I looked the matter up, and wrote an 

 essay in which, I think, I proved that there were cows in this 

 county as good, if not better, than the Oakes cow. 



Now, I want to read just what the Oakes cow did, because 

 it is not always stated. Men will say, " There are no cows 

 at the present day equal to the Oakes cow," but they do not 

 state what she did, nor do they state how she was fed. The 

 greatest amount of butter the Oakes cow ever produced in one 

 year was 4841^ pounds, in 1816. That has been held up as a 

 great yield. She produced 19^ pounds in one week, and an 

 average of more than 16 pounds a week for three months in 

 succession. The largest amount of milk given in any one day 

 was 44^ pounds. Now as to her feed. She was allowed 

 from thirty to thirty-five bushels of Indian meal per year, all 

 her skim-milk, and most of her buttermilk. At one time her 

 owner gave her potatoes, and in the autumn he gave her 

 about six bushels of carrots. I compared this with the yield of 

 " Sibyl," an Ayrshire cow. She gave in one year 1 ,365 pounds 

 of milk, or about 6,000 quarts, on poor feed, too. The value 

 of the milk of "Sibyl," at five cents a quart, would be $300. 

 The butter of the Oakes cow, at fifty cents a pound (which 

 would be a high price), would be only $242 and some cents. 

 This would not make the Oakes cow as profitable a cow as 

 "Sibyl," because "Sibyl" was kept at less expense, and her 

 yield in dollars was greater. 



Adjourned to two o'clock. 



