No. 4.] BREEDS AND VARIETIES. 173 



Mr. . We Avould hiss you off the stage. 



Professor Roberts. Any man who would not take ad- 

 vantage of the knowledge and skill of the best breeders in 

 the world, when a male calf can be bought for fifty dollars, 

 <and a pretty good one, too, ought to be hissed off the 

 stao;e. 



Mr. Mills. Would you not avail yourself, if you could, 

 of just the same condition of things, namely, a thorouglil)red 

 animal on the dam side? That is, would you advise farmers 

 to avail themselves of grade animals because we must, or 

 because it is best? I would like to have that question an- 

 swered. 



Professor Robeets. I would not advise you to buy those 

 thorousrhbred animals, females and males, because vou are 

 not skilled enough to breed them yet. I have seen hundreds 

 of men undertake to breed thoroughbred animals, and the 

 animals that somebody else produced were a good deal 

 higher than they were, and consequently their thorough- 

 breds sank down to their level, and that is the ijrade level. 

 That has been the course of the thoroughbreds. They have 

 gone into the hands of men who were not large enough to 

 handle them, who had not the nerve to get rid of a calf that 

 was not a good calf, if it did have a pedigree a yard long. 



Now I come back to what I did say. I said that a man 

 who produced a thing himself prized it a great deal higher 

 than if he purchased it. That is what I said, did I not? 

 Now, the animal that you go out and buy is liable to repeat 

 the old story. If it drops a calf, that calf does not give half 

 as much milk as its dam did ; her calf does not give near as 

 much as the dam did, and so on. More than that, you know 

 that the thoroughl^red animals, if they are kept up to their 

 standard, must be fed with the utmost skill, and they must 

 be fed liberally. Now, don't you forget that the man who 

 is not used to handling tlioroughl)red stock fails. He had a 

 good deal better learn his lesson with cheaper material. 

 When I send my bovs home I say : ' ' The last thinof you 

 want to do is to ask your father to put thoroughbred females 

 in the dairy. When you have learned to breed a good 

 variety of grade females, then is time enough to ask 3'our 

 father for money to buv a thor()U2:hbred female. You can 



