state Dairy Association. 265 



After this experience I bred my cows to some Galloways, but 

 still failed to get good milkers. Then I got some Ayrshires. They 

 did very well, but I became afraid of them. We did not know 

 Low to take off the horns, or I would have kept on breeding them. 

 By the way, I want to say here that cows now have no more need 

 of horns in this civilized country than a man has need of a gun 

 in church. The horn ought to be killed the first day the calf is 

 dropped. A drop of caustic potash or common lye is good for this 

 purpose. 



I then went back to Shorthorns. Again I was told that there 

 was a strain of Shorthorns that were good milkers. I bought a 

 roan cow, and though she was thirteen years old she raised five 

 calves for me. One heifer calf, with a sire of good milk stock, de- 

 veloped into what I thought was a good milker. Then our creamery 

 started up at Concordia, and a man there offered to test my milk 

 for me. It tested just two per cent. I was told that a good cow 

 ought to test four per cent, so I found again that my work had 

 been useless. 



In 1893 the dairy test started in Chicago, and I watched 

 Hoard's Dairyman, which gave a correct account of each cow. 

 The Jersey Bulletin also charged each cow for what she ate and 

 gave credit for the butter she made, so I saw that the Jersey's 

 made butter cheapest, for the butter of the Jersey breed cost less 

 per pound than the other breeds. There were twenty-five Jerseys, 

 twenty-five Holsteins, twenty-five Shorthorns there; the best cow, 

 a Jersey, made $73 clear profit in six months, so I thought I would 

 breed up in Jersey cattle. I procured a pedigreed Jersey bull 

 and bred him to my Shorthorns. The first cross proved to be a 

 paying cow. Our first cows made an average of 140 pounds of but- 

 ter a year. Our half-blood Jerseys made 250 pounds a year, and 

 now our herd averages over 300 pounds. 



You can see my mistakes in trying to get a good paying cow, 

 and my success in breeding a good paying cow. The main thing 

 in breeding is a good dairy sire. "The sire is half the herd," is 

 the old saying, but I think the sire has three-fourths of the power 

 to increase the value of the herd, and right here is where the 

 secret is that so many fancy breeders do not understand. The 

 dairy cow has two purposes — one is the milk and butter- fat she 

 will produce, and the other is the traits she will hand down to 

 her offspring; the first dies when the cow dies. 



But there is no inherited value in the single-purpose cow. There 

 is no certainty in the heredity of the scrub. That is the reason 



