580 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPAEDIA. 



Ontario has had sufficient experience of several breeds to place them 

 exactly either for beef, milk cheese, or butter, and yet we are weak in 

 knowledge of others that hold a good name in other countries. I refer 

 particularly to the Holstein and Guernsey. This Experimental Farm 

 should be in possession of these in view of information similar to what I 

 am now about to submit. 



What are the requisites of a first-class dairy cow, is the question before 

 us in this enquiry. Men differ in their likes of individual animals for 

 particular purposes, and much of this will be found to arise from 

 experience under various conditions that such and such a stamp of cow 

 has done well or poorly, with either, where food, management, and the 

 particular class of farm also differ. We forget this too often in comparing 

 notes. The cow we want in Ontario for the dairy, on an average of all 

 influences, should combine the following qualities. 



An early maturer and breeder, giving her first calf when two and one- 

 half years old, not to be a full milker before calving, necessarily, because 

 of more trouble and deaths ; a particularly warm hearted mother is not 

 wanted a whole week is sometimes lost by fretting breeds and in- 

 dividuals differing very much in this regard. We want both quantity 

 and quality of milk for the dairy and creamery ; the cow must be a free 

 milker, as in a herd of fifty the loss of time alone in one season would 

 amount to actually twenty-five days. We should have nothing to do with 

 a vicious cow whatever her points may be, as temper affects the very 

 quality of the milk, not to speak of other drawbacks. We want, at least, 

 twenty pounds of milk per day on an average for two hundred days a 

 year. A strict culling out to even this moderate standard would surprise 

 us as a province. We hear often enough of the maximums, and some- 

 times of the average per season, but never of the 'Ymnimums. Specific, 

 gravity is no true indication of milk quality, and we have tried it by 

 nearly three thousand observations on ten different breeds of cows within 

 the last three years. More than this I do not require to say at present ; 

 neither is the bulk or volume usually called per cent. of cream of much 

 significance. The weight of the cream from one hundred pounds of milk 

 is the proper criterion, and our model dairy cow should always give eight 

 pounds to the hundred. Then again, nearly one-half of that cream should 

 be butter a high standard no doubt, but as several items that go to 

 make rich milk are largely in our hands, such a proportion can be attained 

 unquestionably, I submit to better experience than ours, what cheese 

 should be got from every hundred of milk if I said eleven pounds, or 



