1868. 



NEW ENGLAND FARIMER. 



565 



for a time in the background ; but their actual 

 merits once known, they may have a fair trial, 

 and achieve a substantial success. 



As a Dairy Cow, 



The Hereford has little reputation, either in 

 England or America. We have found no 

 Engli.sh authority, except a rare instance or 

 two, which gives her much credit as a milker. 

 Possibly this may have arisen from the fact 

 that the Ilercfoid districts are grazing, and 

 hot dairy. The milk is rich, but too little of 

 it — not much more than to rear her calf in 

 good condition. She dries early. 



If she ever was a milker before her modern 

 improvement began, the milking faculty has 

 been sacrificed for a ready tendency to flesh, 

 which has been obtained in a high degree in 

 her race. We have seen a dozen of them 

 milked through three or four successive sea- 

 sons, and the yi^ds were such as would be 

 unsatisfactory to a modern dairyman. Now 

 and then a fair milker turned up, but they 

 were in a minority of numbers ; taken to- 

 gether they were less than ordinary, for the 

 season. We will not therefore discuss this 

 question further, but pass to another quality 

 as yielding greater pleasure in the relation. 



As a Working Ox, 

 The Hereford is the peer of any other, and 

 superior to most. Large, strong, muscular, 

 well-developed in form, noble, and stately in 

 carriage, he suggests all that need be found 

 in an honest, true worker. At full maturity — 

 say six years old — he girts 7 to 7i feet behind 

 the. shoulders, in ordinary condition, to the 

 Devon's 6 to 6^ feet, and is every way the 

 more powerful, if not quite so quick, or ac- 

 tive. A team of two, three, or four yokes of 

 Herefords, under the control of a good driver, 

 for "a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull al- 

 together," is the perfection of bovine strength 

 and majesty. The joints of the ox are well 

 knit, his sinews strong, his shoulders slant 

 well to the yoke, and he carries his load well, 

 be it at the plow, the cart, or the wagon. He 

 is kindly, intelligent, honest in his labor. We 

 have seen them from half, to three-quarters 

 blood, crossed from the common cow, and up 

 to thorough bred, all of great excellence as 

 draught beasts, well matched, and admirable 

 in all their points. The Hereford blood is 

 strong in marking its descent. From the bulls 

 which were kept in our neighborhood eighteen 

 years ago, crossed upon cows which run on the 

 adjacent commons, in their summer pasturage, 

 we now, in their progeny, to later generations, 

 frequently see cows and oxen but a quarter, 

 an eighth, or sixteenth in blood — got by scrub 

 bulls — that show strong Hereford marks in 

 form and color. 



We once reared an ox got by a Hereford 

 bull, on a wretched little black cow, which* 

 proved to be a hne, stately ox, of a brindle 

 (black an(^ red mixed) color, and a better 

 ■worker we never knew. At eight years old 



we fed him off on grass, and a little corn meal 

 only, and he gave us 1200 pounds of beef, 

 hide and tallow. Where hay and pasturage 

 are cheap, and the farmer has a taste lor the 

 business, it must be a profitable investment to 

 obtain a thoroughbred Hereford bull, cross 

 him on well selected native red cows, and rear 

 and break steers for the markets where good 

 working oxen are in demand. The strong 

 blood of the bull will give uniformity in shape, 

 and color, so that the steers may be easily 

 matched, and if not wanted for the yoke, they 

 are equally valuable, as other cattle, for feed- 

 ing, and the shambles. 



As a beef animal, the Hereford is superior. 

 They feed kindly, are thrifty in growth, ma- 

 ture early — at three and four years old — and 

 prove well on the butchers' block. We are 

 aware that they have not now a general popu- 

 larity in the great cattle breeding regions of 

 our Western States. Few of them have been 

 introduced there, and those, perhaps, not in 

 the right hands to push them to the best ad- 

 vantage. We could wish for them a fairer 

 trial ; but the prejudice against the cows as 

 milkers, and the lack in their taking appear- 

 ance as a highly distinctive race, in compari- 

 son with the more popular Short-horns, have 

 kept them back in public demand. Their 

 time has not yet come ; and it may be, that in 

 the right hands, and with a more critical ob- 

 servation among our cattle breeders and gra- 

 ziers, they may achieve a reputation as a graz- 

 ing beast, equal to some now considered their 

 superiors. 



In their native counties in England, they 

 still hold a high rank, and at the prize shows in 

 the London markets compete successfully with 

 other improved breeds. With all the deficien- 

 cies which the advocates of other breeds allege 

 against them, the Herefords still retain their 

 reputation among their English breeders, who 

 hold on to them with a pertinacity which shows 

 an unabated confidence in their merits and 

 profits as a true grazier's beast. We might 

 show recorded tables of their trials, in Eng- 

 land, with Short-horns, and the relative profits 

 of their feeding for market, in which the 

 Herefords gained an advantage on the score 

 of economy ; but as the trials were not fi"om 

 birth to slaughter, and the comparative early 

 advantages of each breed were omitted in the 

 account, a repetition of the tables here would 

 not be conclusive. 



The Herefords in America. 



At what date they were first imported into 

 this country, we have no accurate account; 

 but that some Herefords came out among the 

 early importations, is evident, from the occa- 

 sional marks of the breed among our native 

 cattle where late importations have not been 

 known. ****** 



7'he largest known importation of Herefords 

 into the United States, was made about the 

 year 1840, upwards of twenty in number, by 

 an Englishman, into the city of New York, 



