No. 4.] DAIRY CATTLE. 81 



giving you 30 to 40 pounds of milk a day, and you wanted 

 to raise their progeny, how often would you have them 

 freshen ? 



Professor Shaw. I would try to have those cows freshen 

 every year, not beginning too early. If you could be assured 

 that they would breed regularly every fifteen months, instead 

 of every twelve months, that would be so much better for the 

 progeny; I am satisfied of that. I think a straight dairy 

 cow should produce her first calf at about thirty months, 

 but not younger ; a grade cow, older than that. 



Question. If you had a good type of grade dairy cow, 

 and she had been milking eleven or twelve months and was 

 still giving 8 or 9 pounds of milk a day, would you make 

 any effort to dry her off, so as to bring her around again ? 



Professor Shaw. No ; I don't think I would until I was 

 sure that she was going to freshen. 



Mr. Burton W. Potter (of Worcester). Mr. H. W. 

 Mowry of Syracuse, N. Y., said a few years ago that he had 

 a man who took more interest in the sires than in the cows, 

 and took better care of them, and as a result lie had more 

 male calves. He changed his foreman to one who took a 

 greater interest in the cows than he did in the sires, and took 

 better care of them, and the next year he had many more 

 heifers than male calves. That was a case of actual practice 

 on the farm. 



The professor says the reason there aren't more lectures 

 on breeding is because it is so difficult a question to handle. 

 That may be true, but I think another reason is, that we have 

 got out of the idea of thinking about it. Dairymen and milk 

 producers have gone out of the State to buy their cows, and 

 the art of raising cows has become a lost art, in a certain sense. 

 I know of dairymen or milk producers in Worcester, and I 

 presume it is safe to say in other places in the State, who 

 never have a calf born on their estate. They take care of 

 the cows, and feed them high, force them high, and keep them 

 as long as they give a profitable amount of milk, and then 

 they are sent off, so they never have a calf on the premises. 



I think the professor has rather belittled the value of race 

 inheritance. Take it in the human race, for instance; we 



