DUAL-PURPOSE CATTLE 67 



ran prices down to a figure that brought the returns very close 

 to the cost of production, and it was only in very bad years that 

 prices actually fell below the cost of production. But the risk 

 of this happening produced a feeling of insecurity, which in 

 the long run must always tell against enterprise and large- 

 minded action. It was, no doubt, the prevalence of this feeling, 

 combined with other reasons, which prevented a systematic 

 improvement of cattle among the herds of the cheese-makers. 

 The sires used in the cheese-making herds were not such 

 terrible specimens as were, and are, commonly used by milk- 

 sellers, but there was, nevertheless, much room for improve- 

 ment. Here and there a breeder had the very finest stock the 

 world could produce, but, generally, the cheese-making farmer 

 was content with very mediocre cattle indeed. Nearly all those 

 occupied in this industry reared their own stock. Only a small 

 percentage of heifer calves, however, were kept to fill, in due 

 course, the gaps made by disease, accident, and old age in the 

 cow-houses ; the great majority of calves were eagerly sold soon 

 after they were dropped. The more careful farmers kept 

 heifers from what they believed to be their best milkers, but 

 as the milk given by individual cows was hardly ever recorded, 

 improvement in this respect was uncertain. But it was only the 

 exceptional man who made a practice of securing the services 

 of a sire known to be of deep-milking blood on the female side 

 of his ancestry, and showing the quality of begetting well- 

 fleshed descendants. As with the milk-selling farmer, so here 

 the evils of an unorganized calf-trade arise largely from the 

 unscientific, unpractical, and disadvantageous system of breed- 

 ing in vogue. A few days after birth, the great majority 

 of calves were bought by one man who dispatched them to 

 another in a different part of the country; thus, I have seen 

 shiploads on their way from Somersetshire to Ireland. They 

 were then sold to a rearer, who had no means of judging their 

 quality except by eye and, after a long journey, most calves look 

 poor things indeed. Even if a rearer happened to buy a specially 

 good "bunch" of calves, he had no means of finding out any- 

 thing about their origin, and so could not be sure of securing 

 another similar lot, however willing he might be to pay such 



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