390 REPORT OF THE BUEEAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 



Summary: 



Increase in value of butter handled in New York $706, 231. 00 



Increase in value of milk and cream handled in New York 152, 600. 00 



858,831.00 

 Decrease in value of cheese handled in New York 734, 845. 55 



Increase in value of dairy products in 1,888 over 1887 124, 985. 45 



The amount of oleomargarine handled is so small that there is 

 no record of it kept. 



One or two facts of significance are shown by the table. 



The first is the constant and rapid decrease in the amount of butter 

 exported, amounting in six years to something more than 62 per cent. , 

 while the total amount of butter handled has been increasing. This 

 shows that we are coming to depend less and less upon foreign coun- 

 tries for a market for our dairy products. 



The second fact of significance is in relation to the almost com- 

 plete extinction of the trade in oleomargarine. The trade in this 

 substance at the time that the national law went into effect, in No- 

 vember, 1886, was enormous, and that the business should have been 

 so completely controlled in so short a time is largely due to the efforts 

 of an efficient dairy commission in seeing that the national and State 

 laws were strictly enforced. 



While New York City exports about seven-eighths of all the dairy 

 products exported from the United States, it is not to be inferred 

 that seven-eighths of all the dairy products produced in the country 

 are handled in New York City. It has been impossible to get ac- 

 curate statistics of all the other large dairy markets; but a late esti- 

 mate of the Commissioner of Agriculture places their value for the 

 entire country, for the year 1888, at $380,000,000, while the total value 

 of the dairy products handled in the New York market for the same 

 period as given in the table above was only $43,172,756, or about one- 

 ninth of the whole. However, the proportion between butter, cheese, 

 and milk in the New York market will probably very nearly hold 

 good in the country as a whole, and will give a fair idea of tne rel- 

 ative amounts of each produed. 



DAIRY CATTLE KIND, CARE, AND MANAGEMENT. 







By far the larger portion of the dairy cows of the United States 

 is what are known as natives or scrubs, that is, they are the descend- 

 ants of the cattle that were brought over by the people by whom the 

 country was settled, and have since been ored with little or no re- 

 gard to ancestry and with more or less admixture of the blood 

 of the more improved breeds. This does not indicate that the im- 

 proved breeds are not appreciated, for in the United States are more 

 Jerseys than on the Island of Jersey, more Holstein-Friesians than 

 Holland, and more Shorthorns than in England, but that the in- 

 terest in improved stock, which only began within the last fifty or 

 seventy-five years, has not yet been able to diffuse itself through the 

 mass and overcome the indifference of the great majority of breeders, 

 for it is a lamentable fact that far too many, perhaps even a majority 

 of our dairymen, make no attempt to increase the product of their 

 cows by judicious selection and breeding, considering that a cow is a 

 cow no matter how much or how little milk she may be able to give, 

 and regard one bull as good as another if he is able to procreate his 



