VERMONT DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 73 



showing - what a cow can be made to do, but it is not economy. 



The growing tendency is to produce a cow of larger and 

 coarser frame, such a cow may give more milk and butter than 

 a medium sized cow of fine bone, but my experience has been 

 that she will not do it so profitably. 



In the first place, she will require more food to keep up her 

 larger frame, second, she will not assimilate her food so well, 

 in other words she will be a hard keeper. 



There is one dairy breed in this country which has that 

 fault very largely developed, and it was the rock they struck 

 on while preparing for the "Battle of the Breeds" at the Co- 

 lumbian Exposition, when the committee insisted on the cost 

 of the food being taken into account, the owners of this par- 

 ticular breed very wisely withdrew, knowing full well they 

 would have no chance against the economical little Jersey. 



I am often asked what I consider the best type of a dairy 

 cow that is, a cow that will turn the rough fodder of the farm 

 into milk with the least possible waste and also produce the 

 most milk per acre from our hill pastures, and I unhesitatingly 

 affirm that it is the Ayrshire type. A number of years ago I 

 tried an experiment with three each of the best specimens of 

 five dairy breeds, as to their capacity to earn their living, 

 they were turned into a large pasture where feed was rather 

 short, with the result that the three Ayrshires kept up their 

 milk flow and also their weight, the Jerseys kept up their flow 

 of milk, but lost slightly in weight, the other breeds all drop- 

 ped in their milk, some of them going almost dry and they all 

 lost in weight, in fact one of the breeds might have starved 

 to death if the experiment had been continued longer. 



The success of the Ayrshire I attribute largely to her strong 

 vitality, coupled with her perfect form, "she is built for busi- 

 ness" and if I could only graft the inherent rich milking qual- 

 ity of the Jersey into the businesslike body of the Ayrshire I 

 would have a nearly perfect cow. 



This we cannot do without running the risk of losing the 

 best characteristics of one or both breeds. 



As all of our different breeds are probably descended from 

 a common ancestor, in mixing them we are liable to be con- 

 fronted with Atavism, one of the main things breeders have 

 to contend against. 



But although we cannot reach the desired goal by the short 

 cut of crossing the breeds, there is no reason why we cannot 

 breed the Ayrshire form on to the Jersey, it may take time, 

 but we know that it is comparatively easy to change the out- 

 ward form of our domestic animals, as an example of what is 

 being done in that line, I have here two cows which you can 

 compare with the typical Jersey of twenty years ago, and here 



