IMPROVED LIVE STOCK FOR THE GENERAL FARM. o 



this, let ns look back to our mother country, old England, with her high 

 rents and taxes, and we find that they were obliged to improve their stock, and 

 with this they have brought their soil up to the highest state of cultivation. 

 In Holland, too, we find them improving their stock in certain lines for 

 untold years. We are told that the people of Holland are slow to adopt new 

 methods, but yet we find them with improved stock as a necessity to profit- 

 able agriculture. 



On the little island of Jersey with her immense population and small area 

 of land from whence to draw her support, they were obliged to improve 

 their stock so that it should subsist on the least possible food and yet pro- 

 duce a large amount of butter, hence we have the little Jersey, an animal 

 of very small stature, but yet the greatest of butter producers. Why is it 

 that with all the opportunities possible we are behind other countries? Our 

 best farmers find it profitable to procure a full complement of the latest 

 improved implements and to invest in suitable buildings to shelter them 

 when not in use, and why will it not pay to apply the same rule to our stock. 

 But it will not do to say that the Americans have never done anything toward 

 the improvement of their stock, for some of our more far-sigh ted forefathers 

 saw the value of improvement in the stock of the country and have produced 

 a few breeds of purely American type and origin. The American Merino 

 sheep is so improved on the old Spanish sheep of 1813 as to be fairly called 

 an American sheep, the greatest producer of fine wool of any sheep on the 

 globe, and, in fact, becoming known as such to the other wool producing 

 countries and being imported there with the very best results. The cross 

 of the American Merino upon the Australian sheep beat anything they had 

 there, and yet they had thought that they had the model wool producing 

 sheep before that. America has also made the now standard trotters, the 

 most speedy and enduring of his kind, and in some classes of swine and 

 fowls we have almost or quite established a perfect and permanent standard, 



SCRUB vs. IMPROVED DAIRY COWS. 



If a scrub cow that will make six pounds of butter per week pays for her keep,, 

 and, by the use of a thoroughbred sire from some of the dairy breeds, her 

 offspring can be made to produce eight or ten pounds of butter per week, 

 the cross has given us a large margin of profit where before we had no profit. 

 The keeper of a dairy herd should thoroughly test his cows and know whether 

 they are paying him or not, and immediately beef the unprofitable ones. 



January 31 good mixed butchers' stock, fat cows, heifers and light steers 

 were quoted at 13.40 to 13.75 per cwt., that being the best class that is mar- 

 keted from the common stock of our country, and on the same day we find 

 extra grade steers, weighing 1,300 to 1,450 pounds, quoted at $4.50 to 15 per 

 cwt. Here we have a difference of about $1 per hundred in favor of the 

 improved stock, and this is not half the story, for the general average weight 

 of the first class is only eight or nine hundi-ed pounds. At the heaviest 

 weight and the best prices they would bring $33.75 apiece, while the grade, 

 at 1,300 pounds and $5.00 per hundred, would bring $G5.00 or almost double 

 the price of the scrub — a good return for the use of a thoroughbred sire. 

 Doubtless, too, the better animals were better fed, but the better feeding 

 counts for more with the better breeding. 



