DUAL-PURPOSE CATTLE 57 



too rare; but it can, and should, become the common stock of 

 any country that aims at wheat and beef production. 



It is especially necessary to any system of intensive production 

 from the land, that includes beef-growing, that all land good 

 enough to carry large or medium-sized cattle, should be well 

 stocked with dual-purpose cows. The thin-fleshed cow that 

 produces butter-making milk is undesirable, for she is worth 

 very little herself as meat when her milking days are over. She 

 has cost as much, or almost as much, in produce from the land 

 to rear as has the better beef-animal, and yet when she comes 

 to be slaughtered she is altogether inferior. Her calves are poor 

 as veal-makers, and her male calves cannot be grown on and 

 made into beef without great loss. Some soils in this country 

 cannot grow well-meated cattle without the addition of excessive 

 artificial feeding, and on such, no doubt, the thin-fleshed animal 

 is very much more valuable than any other cow stock, and should 

 be bred so as to produce the richest possible milk. It is folly to 

 keep cows that are not good for some purpose or other and 

 at present this is too often done. These purely dairy breeds 

 have their admirers, it is true, who advocate their being kept 

 on all classes of land and maintain that the loss on the carcase 

 of the thin-fleshed cow and they do not dispute that the loss 

 is considerable is compensated by the extra amount of dairy 

 produce obtained every year of the animal's life. This would 

 be partially true if we could rely upon a long life of continuous 

 milk-production. But the deep-milking cow, of any sort, is a 

 delicate machine worked under very high pressure, and, like 

 all other machines under similar circumstances, is very apt to 

 go wrong. Udder troubles, failure to breed, and diseases of all 

 sorts are only too often liable to end a career which is at best 

 none too long to secure a return for the food expended in 

 growing an exclusively dairy cow. A cow is not in a state to 

 yield full profit till she drops her third calf; if we could rely, say, 

 on seven periods of lactation during which she was at full profit, 

 it would be easy to calculate which of the two animals, the dairy 

 or the dual-purpose, was the better to keep. Unfortunately, 

 there is never certainty; and so, wherever the land is suitable, 

 it is always best not to trust solely to such delicate organisms 



