LIVE STOCK. 365 



And every farmer should study, as best he may, from his own standpoint, to 

 Tjuild up stock distinctively his own A stock that he may be able to recognize 

 •wherever he sees them. This has already been done, to some extent, in our 

 county. They may not be thoroughbred, but they may be a family of grades so 

 near it that, for all practical purposes, so far as dollars and cents are concerned, 

 the average farmer need know no practical difference. Good, well developed, 

 well fed, grade beeves bring just as much in the market as thoroughbreds. 



But a neighbor of mine says he knows a man who raised scrubs, and he 

 got rich. Well, I know. a man who can neither read nor write, and he got 

 rich too. But I don't apprehend that the fact that he could neither read 

 nor write added very materially to his wealth. Money in scrub live stock is 

 a thing of the past. 



BREEDS OF CATTLE. 



But says my neighbor, there are so many different breeds, with their advo- 

 •cates all crying " the best," that one cannot well determine what type or 

 family to select. It is the market, the situation, the surroundings that must 

 ■determine this question in every case. If it is the dairy business, then the 

 •delicate little fawn-colored Jersey, with her rolls of golden butter that count 

 you out a dollar a pound (if you have that kind of a market) that is distinc- 

 tively the dairy breed. Perhaps scarcely more so than the larger Ayrshire, 

 both noted everywhere for the quality of their milk. But if you are situated 

 "where the market pays better for milk than for butter, and quantity instead 

 of quality is desirable, then the larger and coarser Holsteins stand at the 

 head of the list — the best milkers. Bnt if we are to choose for general farm 

 purposes, for dairy, beef, and work cattle, then Short Horns and Herefords 

 head the list everywhere. 



The Durhams and Herefords make fair milkers, excellent work cattle, and 

 when you are done with them for other purposes they are worth all they cost 

 for beef ; and beef is the watchword so far as stock is concerned, with all 

 farmers engaged in a diversified husbandry. Repeated experiments have 

 demonstrated that it costs fifty per cent more to make a hundred pounds of 

 beef on a three-year old than it does on a yearling; that after eighteen 

 months of age the profit of feeding steadily declines with the increasing age 

 of the animal; and that there is an actual loss in feeding cattle over three 

 years old for beef. Boards of Agriculture in some of the States are now re- 

 fusing premiums for beeves over three years old, on the ground that they 

 have no right to encourage what they know to be unprofitable methods of 

 farming. And another fact we should never lose sight of — grade animals 

 produce a larger percentage of dressed beef, as compared with gross weight, 

 than natives, and of a better quality ; hence larger profits and more ready 

 sales. 



SHEEP, HISTORY OF MERIHOS. 



What was formerly known as the " native sheep " have been described by 

 one who knew them as a " coarse, long legged, light bodied and unprofitable 

 animal," and the change has been made principally through the importa- 

 tion of the Spanish Merinos, which, though themselves an inferior breed, 

 through Judicious selection, feeding and breeding, have developed, in less 

 than half a century, the most valuable breed of sheep known in the world — 

 the American Merinos. 



