STOCK-IIUSBANDRY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 205 



I have three horned animals, as I have said, and they can 

 only drink one at a time. There is one advantage. Then 

 another advantage is, as I have mentioned, — turn them out 

 together and they have no fear of each othdr ; they cannot 

 injure one another. And then there is a great deal of com- 

 fort in working around them ; there is no fear of your eyes 

 being put out. I have got a four-year-old bull that, when I 

 take him out, I have to hold him with a stick to keep him 

 awa}'- from me. He is strong and active, and I should not 

 want to light him single-handed ; but I have the feeling, all 

 the time, that while that bull has the power to knock me 

 down, if he can get a chance, he has not the power to tear 

 me to pieces. Although I am not safe, in the sense in which 

 I might wish to be, there is not any danger from him com- 

 pared with what there would be if he had horns. 



Remarks have been made here indicating that the speakers 

 thought that hornless cattle can ' fight. The most they can 

 do is to push each other. I was foolish enough to turn this 

 bull of which I have spoken, when two years old, into a 

 pasture where there were two yoke of oxen. They were 

 large Durham oxen and got the advantage of this bull when 

 he was two years old, but I very soon found that he was 

 able to fight those oxen anywhere. But there was one thing 

 more : The oxen marked the bull, but the bull did not mark 

 the oxen; he did them no damage at all. He simply. got 

 the advantage of them because he put his head under their 

 breasts, and, being lower than they were, he took them off 

 their forward feet and turned them ; but he did not mark 

 them, and could not. 



Mr. Cheever. If I had quoted from the authorities that 

 I might have raked up in my library, I could have given 

 more than an hour's time to accounts of injuries from bulls 

 with horns ; but my object was to draw attention to the sub- 

 ject, and suggest that it was possible to breed off horns, and 

 to give people a chance to think over the matter. I know 

 that such a thing can be done as to breed off horns, and that 

 pure-bred bulls will breed, in a large majority of cases, horn- 

 less calves. If you turn ordinary cattle into the barn when 

 their coats are wet from standing in the rain, when you go 

 near them, they will be likely to strike you with their horns 



