DAIRY CATTLE AND DAIRYING. 765 



temperament do not meet at right angles as in the case of a cross between 

 the Holstein and Jersey or Guernsey and thus set up a conflicting tendency 

 in the resulting heifers. 



The Jersey and Guernsey families are distinctly butter breeds, their 

 milk averaging nearly five per cent and more, in some herds. They have 

 the constitutional power to take grain and forage and return for it butler 

 fat at the lowest economic cost of any of the breeds. The Guernsey also 

 enjoys the distinction of producing milk and butter of a high color as well 

 as very desirable flavor. Both breeds are of a distinctive dairy tempera- 

 ment having never been weakened in their dairy tendencies by dual-pur- 

 pose or beef breeding crosses. 



It is not the purpose of this article to enter into a discussion of how to 

 breed dairy cattle but rather to enumerate general principles for guidance. 

 The logic of breeding remains about the same in all breeds. The sire is 

 the fountain head. From him comes the seed. It must be of the right 

 strain and stamp and strongly prepotent of dairy tendencies. The cow 

 is the seed-bed. This must be harmonious and well fitted to nourish the 

 seed and start it on its way in the direction we desire. It may be said 

 that all noted producers 'of great dairy cattle have placed their chief reli- 

 ance on the sire. The average farmer pays but little attention to the sire. 

 A look at the cattle he generally breeds shows how thoroughly wrong he 

 is in his notions of breeding. 



II. Care, Housing and Feeding. 



The secretion of milk is a maternal function. The cow must be con- 

 structed for it in the first place. Then she must have kind and gentle 

 treatment and her stable home must be fashioned in obedience to the one 

 word COMFORT. The stable must be well lighted to insure her health 

 through the antiseptic effect of sunlight. It must be well supplied con- 

 stantly with fresh air that she may have the means to oxygenate her blood 

 from which is secreted the milk. The circulation of blood from heart to 

 lungs; lungs to the udder and back again to heart in a cow that gives 

 twenty-five to forty pounds of milk a day is enormous. Think of a farmer 

 who will shut up a herd of cows in a close, dark, unsanitary stable, leaving 

 them to poison themselves with foul breathed-over air, and then expect 

 good, profitable results from such blind folly. A cow lives on what she 

 eats, drinks and breathes. If the food or drink is poisoned, foul or unfit, 

 she feels it, and so if the air she breathes is poisoned, the effect is the same. 

 Remember that oxygen is food. The blood is purified and nutritioned 

 from the air. Poisoned air means a poisoned animal. The only satis- 

 factory system of ventilation is what is known as the King System. 

 Stables for northern latitudes should be constructed with two to three dead 

 air spaces in the walls with plenty of windows and equipped with the King 



