BREEDING MILK GOATS 



Anglo-Swiss and Egjrptian Breeds Are Popular in the United States- 

 The Industry a Profitable one — Distinctive American Breed 



Is Needed 



J. W. Thompson 

 Ex-Editor ''Spirit of the West,'' ''Stock Farm,'" Etc. 



IT IS obvious that a new source of 

 milk supply is rapidly becoming a 

 necessity in this country. Various 

 causes are bringing it about. One 

 is the speedy multiplication of densely 

 inhabited cities and towns, with popu- 

 lation so closely crowded as to preclude, 

 largely, the keeping of the cumbersome 

 and unsanitary family cow. Another is, 

 failing lands, both in area and produc- 

 tiveness, with increased high cost of 

 feed, of all sorts, for maintaining ex- 

 tensive dairies to supply milk at a price 

 not prohibitive to average households. 

 A third cause is the menace of tuber- 

 cular affection in the bovine species, 

 with other infections and impurities 

 connected with dairying institutions, 

 defying all efforts successfully to cor- 

 rect or remove them. 



Casting about for a substitute, none 

 other appears, on the whole, to present 

 as many and strong claims to take the 

 place as the genus Capra, the animal 

 first employed by mankind to supply 

 the earliest and most wholesome of all 

 goods. 



A MODERN IMPROVED TYPE 



A vastly improved variety has been 

 developed in recent years, manifesting 

 capacity and possibility in milk produc- 

 tion of very high order. The orient has 

 led off in this, as in the first domestica- 

 tion of the animal, and is the source 

 from which this country has to derive 

 its foundation stock. Upper Egypt, 

 Abyssinia and Nubia have developed 

 what is known as the Nubian breed, 

 which, modified by a cross with natives 

 in England, has given the Anglo- 

 Nubian largely in use in that country. 

 Switzerland has evolved three distinct 



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varieties, the Toggenburg, the Saanen 

 and the Guggisberger, which, with the 

 Maltese, found in the island of Malta, 

 comprise practically all entitled to the 

 claim of special adaptation. This coun- 

 try has lagged far behind in developing 

 an industry productive of the "kind, 

 making the first importations worthy 

 of mention less than a score of years 

 ago, and on the menace of the "foot 

 and mouth disease," putting a ban on 

 the further import of all animals liable 

 to prove carriers of the dreaded germs. 

 A limited number of pure-bred descend- 

 ants of those brought in, with the class 

 of grades resulting from crosses made 

 with the native stock, compose the total 

 holdings up to the present, so scant 

 that the limited number of enthusiastic 

 breeders and owners are combining in an 

 effort to induce the Government, under 

 its own agency, to procure additional 

 stock of each of the established breeds 

 from the forbidden lands across the sea. 



MILK-PRODUCING VALUE 



The capability of the high-bred class 

 to produce milk in quantity and quality 

 encouraging a general introduction is 

 sufficiently well established to convince 

 the most sceptical, while even the bet- 

 ter specimens of grades of relatively low 

 order show up in an astonishing man- 

 ner. A test made at the farm of the 

 California Agricultural College, of a 

 grade Toggenburg doe, showed a milk 

 yield, in 365 consecutive days, of 2,914 

 pounds, and the conclusion of numerous 

 experiments made by the same institu- 

 tion is, that average does of the sort can 

 be largely bred, yielding 3 to 4 

 quarts per day for a lactic period of 

 eight to ten months. The flavor of the 



