04 



farmers, to learn from some authoritative source in Canada what effect the oper- 

 ation would have. The mode of procedure was to put each steer into the sling 

 which we use for lifting the bulls when the hoofs are to be trimmed. The neck 

 was fastened securely between two upright pieces of scantling, one of which was 

 movable at the top, after the style of the common old-fashioned stable stanchion. 

 The head was then tied to one side. The hair around the base of each horn was 

 clipped off, to permit the cutting to be effected in such a way as to remove a 

 narrow ring of skin with the horn. Leavitt's dehorning machine was used on 

 two horns. It is constructed in such a way as to clip the horn off at one snap. 

 In the case of three-year-old steers, the horns were too hard and tough for one 

 man to use the machine with sufficient quickness of motion. For the other horns, 

 a common fine-tooth carpenter's saw was used. 



The operation on each horn lasted from one quarter to one half of a minute. 

 In the case of two of the steers, the saw cut through an artery, from which a 

 small jet of blood spurted. The wounds on the heads of two of the steers 

 appeared to be acutely painful for nearly a week ; the other two animals did not 

 appear to suffer any inconvenience after the operation was ended. It was not 

 expected that blood would flow so freely from the wounds as it did in the two 

 cases mentioned, and no particular preparation had been made to staunch the 

 flow at once. A cloth covered with coal-tar is probably one of the most accessible 

 and suitable applications which can be made on the ordinary farm. The steers 

 have been fed in box stalls, running loose in pairs, and they seem to be most 

 healthy and gentle since the wounds healed. 



In the case of the Jersey bull, he had become so vicious that the attendants 

 went into his box-stall only at the jeopardy of their lives. Instructions had been 

 given several months previously that no one was to go into his box-stall until 

 after he had been securely tied, For the dehorning operation, the bull was tied 

 in a similar manner to the steers. His horns were sawn off as close to the skull 

 as possible. Not a thimbleful of blood altogether was shed ; and when he was 

 turned loose in his box-stall he acted as mildly as a sheep. 



Horns and their Relation to Milk and Cream. 



In an interesting paper on " Horns and their Relation to Milk and Cream," 

 read last year before the annual meeting of the New York State Agricultural 

 Society, Dr. James Law, of Cornell University, says : 



Horn is made up essentially of gelatine or glue, which also makes up the 

 substance of hair, of sinew, and the non-earthy part of bone. The analysis of 

 gelatine, of hair and of horn, show only the slightest shades of difference. 



In both hairs and horn there is a minute quantity of iron and a trace of fat, 

 but too little to be of any importance. In the fibrous structure of bone, in hair 

 and in horn, there is one material, and if the abstraction of this material from the 

 blood for the formation of horn affects the constitution of the blood so as to 

 favor the secretion of milk, then its abstraction for the formation of bone, sinews 

 and hair, must be equally effective in increasing or improving the milk yield. 

 But large bones and sinews have never been found desirable qualities, either in 

 beef or milking breeds. Indeed, the reverse is notoriously the case, as seen in the 

 spare forms and delicate limbs of the Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Ayrshire, Swiss, 

 Brittany, ami, indeed, all the exclusively milk and butter breeds. Even in the 

 Shorthorn and Holstein cow, which are at once milking and beef animals, the 



