SECRETARY'S REPORT. 117 



Individuals are met with, it is said, that will give over 3,100 

 quarts a year, and the dairymen of Vienna often buy them 

 soon after calving, at large prices. They easily take on fat also. 

 They will usually make a pound of beef on 30 lbs. of hay or its 

 equivalent. The oxen are used for work from three to eight 

 years in the valleys, and to five or six years on the mountains ; 

 then they are fattened and sold. The beef is not so high- 

 flavored as that of the Hungarians. As working oxen they 

 rank perhaps next after the Hungarians. 



In regard to the proportion of dressed beef to live weight, 

 the oxen, before being fattened, will dress from 43 to 50 per 

 cent. Oxen well fed and half-fattened will dress 52 to 60 per 

 cent. Oxen thoroughly fattened, including tallow, dress 70 to 

 77 per cent. The proportion of tallow to dressed weight is, 

 for oxen not fat, 5 to 10 per cent., half-fattened, 10 to 15 per 

 cent., completely fattened, 20 to 25 per cent. In feeding, 

 3,000 lbs. of hay or its equivalent are required to make 100 lbs. 

 of fat, but in animals of very fine bones, and fine and soft skin, 

 the amount required is far less, say 2,000 or 2,400 lbs., or its 

 equivalent, while with animals of very large bony structure and 

 thick skin, 4,000 to 4,200 lbs. may be required. 



Thus we have noticed a few of the more prominent moun- 

 tain breeds of cattle on the continent. The Alpine mountains 

 are the great breeding places which supply the crowded popu- 

 lations below with meat. The wide stretches of mountain pas- 

 ture among the Alps are swarming with cattle through the 

 summer. Every sunny slope is alive with them, and it is rare 

 that the traveller among those Alpine heights cannot hear the 

 musical tinkling of myriads of bells, some of them close at 

 hand, others just audible in the distance, while he can often 

 distinguish whole herds too far up and too far off to enable him 

 to hear their sounding brass. Pasturage is cheap there, in 

 summer, and it is impossible to get any return from the soil in 

 any other way. In the plains the land commands too high a 

 price to enable the owner to compete with his mountain neigh- 

 bors in pasturage, and the raising of cattle declines in propor- 

 tion as the price of land increases. 



The Alpine cattle-breeder raises and keeps more cattle in 

 summer than he can feed in winter. He is obliged to sell more 

 or less on the approach of winter, and to feed out his straw and 



