116 THIRTIETH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



that he has produced a cow that does not make butter enough 

 to pay for her keep. 



I am a dairy cattle man, though I am a student of beef 

 types. I am a breeder of dairy cattle and I do not know near- 

 ly as much today as I thought I did thirty years ago, but if 

 one thing is fixed in my mind it is that if I want a race horse 

 or a dairy cow I must breed straight from the race horse or 

 dairy fountains of blood. One illustration to show you the 

 power of heredity we have to deal with. ' A fox hound is bred 

 to follow fox tracks. That fox hound will run over thou- 

 sands of bird tracks and never know it ; but the moment he 

 strikes a fox track up comes his head and you will hear the 

 deep-toned cry in answer. A bird dog with nose equally 

 sharp will pass over a hundred fox tracks and never know it, 

 but the moment he strikes the track of a bird he is arrested, 

 everything at halt, the dog is rigid in answer to the purpose 

 for which he was bred, "I have found it, I have found it." 

 " What have you found? ' "I have found what I was bred to 

 find." There is not a boy in all Vermont foolish enough to 

 go out hunting foxes with a bird dog, or to go hunting birds 

 with a fox hound, or hunt either with a bull dog, but his daddy 

 will go plunging around hunting for butter in a beef cow. 

 What is the matter ? He is not in touch with great econom- 

 ics of the question. He has come down through a general 

 purpose notion which is taking the best profit out of his pock- 

 et. His necessities are calling constantly for an increase in 

 the power of production, and he must turn away from this 

 old fashioned general purpose influence if he is going to get 

 what he needs; he must begin to breed and fashion his animal 

 as the economy of the times demand. Look at this dairy cow, 

 see how she is built. Look at this one (pointing to the beef cow 

 on left) a square block with a leg at each corner. Each cow 

 comes down through long years of inherited temperament, 

 and by temperament we mean a strong, over-ruling predesti- 

 nation of heredity which takes food and turns it into a certain 

 channel for a certain product. The beef cow eats food and 

 turns it into the flesh-making channel. The short horn cow 

 may give a fair amount of milk, but undertake to crowd her 

 a little, feed her a little more food and at once you will find 

 the dairy temperament weakens and the cow begins to put on 

 flesh. Therefore you have to start with the first thing in 

 breeding dairy cattle, you must start with the dairy tempera- 

 ment. You cannot feed fat into milk, you cannot determine 

 your butter fat by the food you feed. You can determine the 

 quantity of milk, but there are many thousand farmers who 

 cannot believe that they must first determine the character of 

 milk in the cow by breeding. Temperament has made this cow 



