CHAPTER XII. 

 DAIRY CATTLE AND DAIRYING. 



By W. D. Hoard, Editor Hoard's Dairyman. 



I. A PROPER FOUNDATION FOR THE INDUSTRY. II. CARE, HOUSING AND 



FEEDING. III. THE SOIL. -IV. ORGANIZATION. V. THE GROWING OF 



CROPS. VI. THE MAN BEHIND THE COW. 



The title of this article puiposely places dairy cattle as the foundation 

 of the most successful prosecution of the industry of dairying. There is 

 nothing like having a proper foundation for all human enterprises. The 

 same may be said of the mind and judgment of the dairyman himself. If 

 the foundation ideas he has of his business are unsound and faulty the 

 outcome is sure to be unsatisfactory. 



The development of dairy qualities in cattle is for the purpose of having 

 an animal that will produce milk economically. But few farmers, we 

 think, give this phase of the subject the attention they should. They have 

 never seriously considered the wonderful modifying influence of breed 

 over feed in the production of any given product or the economy of any 

 animal function. To illustrate — the famous trotting horse, Jay-I-See, 

 trotted a mile in two minutes and ten seconds on grain ration of 12 quarts 

 of oats a day. Put a draft horse on the track and feed him four times 

 that amount of oats and yet he could not very likely, trot a mile in eight 

 minutes. Reverse the situation and put the trotting horse in the collar 

 against a heavy load, will extra feeding make him equal to the draft horse 

 In a class of work that he was not bred to perform ? Of course not. 



I. A Proper Foundation for the Industry. 



So we sec that breeding an animal to the work of a certain function in- 

 creased very greatly the economic effect of that feed that must be used in 

 support of that function. This is the reason why a well-bred dairy cow 

 will produce from six to ten thousand pounds of milk on no more feed 

 than a beef-bred cow would consume in the production of two or three 

 thousand pounds. When the great body of farmers in this country clearly 

 understands the influence of breed over feed, then will be seen much less 

 waste of labor and feed. As the case now stands, there is an enormous 

 waste in this direction of using ill bred and unfit cows for the work of 

 dairying. There is a clearly seen principle — if men would look for it — 

 running all through nature in this respect. In Mechanics we see that 

 every machine has a form well fitted to its function. If the builder of a 



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