No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 377 



they generally wanted a little souietliing to warm them up. On one 

 occasion they tried to tell the landlord at the tavern what they 

 wanted; they didn't know the name, so the Canuck said: "You take 

 a little whiskey to make it strong, and a littlp water to make ir 

 weak; a little lemon to make it sour, and a little sugar to make it 

 sweet." "Oh," said the landlord, "that is a flip." And so it is with 

 our farmer. You get a little Holstein for the milk, and a little 

 Jersey for the cream, and a little Shorthorn for the beef, and you 

 have a "flip" every time, and if I want to see poor cattle, I will go 

 to the place where they have followed this course. 



When I went into breeding, I raised all my heifer calves. But 

 there was something wrong; I didn't get results; so I said 'I will 

 have to be move careful,' and I selected them only from the best 

 cows, and I got nearer what I wanted, but I still drew a good many 

 blanks, until I began to examine the calves themselves. Now it is 

 a fact that a good many heifer calves fail to be as good as their 

 dams. Do you ever think how much we ask of the dairy cow? We 

 ask her in twelve months to support herself, to reproduce herself, 

 and give us an amount of milk often equal to the weight of her 

 body. Now, I have begun to examine my calves, and I find a calf 

 that is weak, and aenemic, I don't try to raise it, and this you can 

 tell by looking at the calf. Open its mouth, and look at its teeth. 

 and if you find only four of the milk teeth, that calf is not worth 

 raising. Why? That mother had too much of a strain on her, and 

 she was not able to put strength and stamina into the calf she was 

 raising. I have raised some of these calves, and they have always 

 been a disappointment. Then I examined the naval, and the teats; 

 one of the tests of a good udder is to have the teats placed right. 

 This fall I was a judge at a fair up in my state, and a man brought 

 in a heifer. She was a fine Jersey, and I thought "that is a prize 

 winner, sure," until I examined her udder and found two of the 

 teats joined together. I asked him why he raised her, and he sai'^ 

 he had never looked at that; he had never seen it. 



Now, when a calf passes muster^ then we keep it, but do not for- 

 get that their value as cows will depend largely ujjon their treat 

 ment for the first two years. They must be w^ell cared for. After the 

 first few months it is better to turn them out and let them work a 

 little for their feed; it helps to develop them. They should have a 

 large stomach, for it shows great storage capacity, even if it makes 

 them appear pot-bellied. They must have a place where to carry 

 the feed. I was at Moorestown, Nev\^ Jersey, last winter, to see a 

 herd of cattle that were large producers. I saw nothing abnormal 

 about the cows except that they all seemed unusually large, and 

 that many of the two-j-ear old heifers were larger than those two 

 and a half and three years old as usually seen of that breed. I 

 could not understand it until they told me that they fed those calves 

 on milk until they were a year old. 



Now, then, we have selected our stock, and are breeding along 

 that line year after year. We have found what we want, and we 

 will go on breeding along that line, and in ten or twelve years we 

 will have a herd that is nearly equal to pure bred. They are really 

 pure bred, only they can't be registered. When we are adding to 

 our stock we will get in one or two good pure bred females, and at 



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