592 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



succeed as the general manager of a bunch of cows one must study the 

 actual conditions surrounding them in detail and select a breed which 

 will produce what he finds will be the most in demand and consequently 

 the most profitable. In this community there seems to be a steady demand 

 for both beef and butter, and I suspect that like conditions prevail in 

 most farm districts that are in easy reach of creameries and centers of 

 population and the production of both is not only profitable but necessary. 

 We have now reached the dividing of the ways and upon admitting that 

 there is a place for both the beef and dairy types here the only question 

 remaining for us to answer is if both are to be secured from one breed, as 

 the little Devon or Brown Swiss, or perhaps some milking strain of some 

 beef breed, or shall the milk producer keep the special dairy cow, as the 

 Jersey, Guernsey, Holstein or Ayrshire, and allow his neighbor who grows 

 some beef to keep the large, fine-looking beef breeds, all the while smiling 

 at the delicate, modest herds of high-strung fawn-like creatures whose 

 palling qualities are their main recommendation to consideration and 

 referring to their owners as men who haven't money enough to buy cows 

 and are ashamed to milk goats. 



On large farms, where considerable quantities of feed are produced or 

 can be bought cheap, where forage is abundant and whose owners coft- 

 template fattening many steers, thus converting this cheap feed into beef, 

 it is perhaps better to raise the dual purpose cow, but if beef is to be the 

 only end why not cleave to one of the many excellent beef breeds with 

 which we are so well supplied? In the case just spoken of don't try the 

 Jersey, as she might have calves, and the calves might be steer calves; 

 which I find for some strange reason to be 'persona non grata" in the 

 feed lot. I remember hearing a pillar of respectability offer a Jersey 

 heifer's calf for $2 and upon the transfer taking place the purchaser 

 raised his voice in lamentation when he found that he was the possessor 

 of a Jersey steer. He was promptly informed that he had been told in the 

 first place that it was a Jersey heifer's calf and that the question of 

 sex had not been referred to. 



On the other hand, the small farmer who milks cows as a business 

 and is not prepared to give steers the whole course from the cradle to 

 the grave had better keep an exclusive dairy breed and try to sell his 

 steer calves to the folks across the river or any one who thinks he can 

 produce beef from them at a profit. He will find his little cow as big 

 in the bucket as the biggest beef bred animal if not more so, weight 

 considered; and certainly more profitable for milk as she has a far 

 smaller body to be carried over the dry seasons, and the periods of 

 drouth are apt to be shorter and less often. Gov. Hoard whose utter- 

 ances have ever been "cow gospel to the dairy man," is authority for 

 the statement that somewhere near 60 per cent to 65 per cent of the feed 

 consumed must, under the best of conditions, go to the keeping up of 

 the repair of the bodily tissues of the cow and the milk must be made 

 from the remaining 35 per cent to 40 per cent. It follows that with the 

 lighter dairy cow there is less feed needed to maintain the animal 

 itself, while with the highly specialized milk producing apparatus and 

 shorter period of vacation it produces in the whole year a quantity of 



