FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 121 



BUILDING UP THE DAIRY HERD. 



BY HON. J. W. HELME^ ADRIAN. 



• 



In the year 1808, being dissatisfied with fruit growing on my 40-acre 

 farm in Adrian, I determined to change to dairying. Having no prac- 

 tical knowledge of expert dairying, my first step was to post myself 

 and I subscribed for Hoard's Dairyman and other papers. After read- 

 ing these I determined to have a thoroughbred herd of some dairy breed 

 and upon the conclusion of the World's Fair test, I naturally selected 

 the Jersey as my choice of breeds. I next subscribed for the Jersey 

 Bulletin and bought all the Jersey literature I could get to post up on 

 Jersey families. After considerable study I decided on the St. Lambert 

 family and especially the Matilda branch of that family. Matilda 

 4th, who gave 16,000 pounds of milk in one year, was to my mind the 

 greatest Jersey cow that ever lived. I had $500 to buy stock with and 

 the question came up shall I buy ten "fair" cows and have my herd in 

 operation at once, or shall I buy one or two extra cows and breed up? 

 My cupidity said "buy ten;" my good judgment said "buy the best at any 

 price." I finally purchased a grand-daughter of Matilda 4th, for which 

 I paid $300, spot cash. She was in calf to the best bull living at that 

 time, the sire of Ida Marigold who had just won a sweepstake at the 

 World's Fair. She dropped me a bull calf, just what I wanted to head 

 my new herd. Pretty big price you say. Well, she was the best invest- 

 ment I ever made. Last year at the age of 16 years, she dropped me 

 a calf that I sold for |75^ and gave me 7,000 pounds of milk, which sold 

 in the form of cream for over |100, and she has been doing this for each 

 of the nine years she had been with me. She was not a phenomenal 

 milker but very persistent, hard to dry up, rugged and healthy. She 

 had a pedigree in which every animal in my herd, twenty-five in num- 

 ber, are her daughters or grand-daughters and every one in milk will 

 produce more milk and butter when mature than she. 



Here is the first lesson in building up the herd. Like produces like, 

 but more often the likeness of an ancestor. A calf from an extra fine 

 grade cow may "take back" to a worthless ancestor. The foundation of 

 a dairy herd should be a great performer with a pedigree full of great 

 performers. Neither alone will do; we should have both. Thus the 

 more star performers in the pedigree the less chance you have of 

 drawing blanks in the offspring. I also bought another registered cow 

 for |150. With these two cows I founded my herd, in March, 1894. 



To review briefly, to start a dairy herd, first read the dairy papers and 

 books; next select the breed you like best, for that is the one you will be 

 the more liable to be successful with, but it should be a dairy breed, 

 viz., Jersey, Guernsey, Holstein, or Ayrshire; avoid the beef breeds for 

 the dairy and especially that mythical thing known as the "general pur- 

 pose cow." A cow does one of two things with her feed — she either 

 puts it upon her back or into the milk pail; she cannot do both. For 

 foundation animals, get the best; the foundation cow should be a good 

 16 



