DUAL-PURPOSE CATTLE 65 



our cattle was and still is brought into existence in the herds 

 on the milk-selling farms, that the man who bred them and 

 sold them as babies was often obliged to buy them back when 

 they had reached maturity, and thus replace his own worn-out 

 milkers. In fact, so great had the proportion of ordinary and 

 inferior cows become, that all really good specimens made a 

 price which only those very favourably situated for selling milk 

 could pay. Thus a new evil arose, as many of the cow-keepers 

 who were able to buy the best milkers carrying good flesh did 

 not breed from them; it suited them better to milk through 

 one period of lactation and then sell them to the butcher, the 

 processes of feeding for milk and for fat meat going on concur- 

 rently. This system, called "milking out fat," has the worst 

 possible effect on the quality of our cow-stock ; the only excuse 

 for it is that the milk-sellers who practise this are saved the 

 risk of disease tuberculosis and contagious abortion which 

 undoubtedly exist to a very alarming extent among our dairy 

 cows. 



On the average farm the evil generally went on from bad to 

 worse. The calf resulting from the use of a bad bull on one 

 farm grew into an inferior cow on a distant holding, for it was 

 seldom economical to rear her on the milk-seller's farm; she 

 was then sold into some cow-shed adjacent to the railway or 

 residential district and was mated with another inferior bull. 

 The result was a calf of still poorer quality and so the vicious 

 process was continued. It is true, though no excuse can be made 

 for it, that our general want of method in distribution and 

 co-operative buying and selling gave some small justifica- 

 tion for such short-sighted policy on the part of those who kept 

 cows only to give milk. Dealers buying young calves paid the 

 same price and that, of course, the lowest possible for one 

 inheriting good milking and fleshing qualities as for one sired 

 by a bull with no good qualities to transmit. Thus a farmer who 

 paid 35 for a good bull to use in his herd instead of buying 

 something unspeakably bad for 10 or 12, got no immediate 

 return for his outlay; the utmost, in fact, he was ever likely to 

 get was an occasional good animal which he kept to rear himself. 

 The number of those so kept, however, was often so small that 

 M. 5 



