No. 4.] DAIRY ECONOMICS. 193 



in the bovine as in the human race. The power of resist- 

 ance in the individual of the human family and in all the 

 lower animals is what enables them to come to their ma- 

 turity without the attack of tuberculosis. The lack of 

 resistance is what causes us to fall under tuberculosis. There 

 is no doubt in the mind of any man giving his attention to 

 this, giving his thought to it, or, even if he has not observed, 

 his reasoning faculty will tell him that a three-3-ear-old ani- 

 mal is more mature, better endowed with resistance than a 

 two-year-old animal. A woman at twenty-five years of age 

 or twenty-two years of age is more mature than a girl of 

 sixteen. The one put into the sphere of hard work, work 

 of any kind, or called on for maternity, at sixteen will fall 

 very much more readily under tuberculosis than another at 

 twenty-two or twenty-five. Wc have reduced the vitality 

 of men and women to-day by forcing in the earl}' part of 

 life, starting in the kindergarten and primary schools, grad- 

 uating at twenty or twenty-two, coming out with a diploma 

 and with the evidences of culture and what we call educa- 

 tion. We are being convinced that we have made a great 

 mistake ; and no greater mistake is made there than is made 

 by the dairyman when he urges his animals on under high 

 pressure at two years of age. 



Maj. Henry E. Alvord (of Washington, D. C). Re- 

 ferring to this matter of the age at which dairy animals 

 should be bred, I have the record of three years of work 

 not more than thirty miles from Briar Cliff Farm, and Avith 

 the same class of animals, but with a much less number, 

 where there were very different results. We found that by 

 proper care and rearing the Jersey heifers were as mature, 

 as well prepared for their life work as dairy animals, and as 

 resistant to disease, at two years of age as they were at 

 three. We found our percentage of non-breeding animals 

 more than double, as the result of trying to hold them to 

 three }ears before their first calf. We found a considerable 

 number of cases of those animals coming into milk at two 

 years of age, in spite of us. I remember one year having a 

 heifer at the New York State Fair that made a pound of 

 butter a day on the fair ground, and yet she didn't have her 



