1857. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



139 



two years old and remain farrow the next year. 

 The farmers of Massachusetts should be careful in 

 selecting the best of their calves from their best 

 milk cows, for raising. 



Mr. Brown inquired of Mr. FiTcn if he decid- 

 edly preferred the practice of having his heifers go 

 farrow the third year, to which he replied that he 

 did, that the experience of himself and of his father 

 before him had convinced him that was the better 

 way. 



Mr. Wetherell inquired of Mr. Howard if 

 the Dunlop cattle referred to by him were not in 

 fact the short-horned Durham breed, imported to 

 Scotland from England, by a man by the name of 

 Dunlop. 



Mr. Howard replied, that he understood the 

 Duke of Hamilton first introduced the breed of 

 cattle which were afterwards called Dunlop ; but 

 there was no doubt that they belonged to the short- 

 horned breed, and were afterwards crossed with the 

 Jersey. 



Mr. Wetuerell read an account of the intro- 

 duction of the Ayrshire stock, from a work by a 

 Mr. Stephens, to which Mr. Howard responded, 

 that the work was a compilation from English 

 works, and by a man who was much prejudiced 

 against the Jersey breed, so much so as not to state 

 the facts fairly. As to the beef of Durham cattle, 

 he said it was well understood that in the principal 

 markets in London, it was sold for a cent per pound 

 less than that from other stock. 



Hon. J. W. Proctor, of Danvers, was very much 

 gratified with the remarks of the gentleman from 

 Sheffield, (Mr. Fitch ; ) he liked to hear the practi- 

 cal farmers relate their experience ; he did not be- 

 lieve that gentlemen who speak so much of what 

 the books have told them of the breeds of cattle in 

 our country, knew quite so much as they some- 

 times suppose they do. The first inquiry when a 

 young farmer is to stock his farm with cows, should 

 be, for what he wants cows 5 and nine-tenths of the 

 farmers of the State want them for the milk, either 

 to be sold as milk or to be converted into butter 

 and cheese. The Jersey cows would yield the greatest 

 quantity of butter from a given quantity of milk, 

 but they cannot be obtained for any reasonable price. 

 From his own experience he had found, when he 

 inquired as to the cost of feeding different breeds, 

 as to their character and their products, no better 

 cows than those of the common New England stock. 

 His neighbors in Essex county generally regarded 

 them in the same manner. He did not believe any 

 stock could be found better adapted to our farms 

 than that. As examples of the excellence of it, he 

 mentioned the case of a stock of forty cows kept 

 for milk on the Burleigh farm, which averaged very 

 nearly a gallon per day throughout the whole year — 

 three hundred and sixty two gallons per cow. 

 Another farmer kept fifty cows which averaged five 



quarts per day through the year ; and they were 

 the old fashioned quarts that were quarts, not such 

 as modern legislative wisdom had decided to be 

 quarts. 



Col. Newell, of West Newbury, said he did not 

 know of any cattle in his vicinity which could not 

 be traced to some imported stock. Many varieties 

 of foreign stock have been imported, and they are 

 all infused at present in the stock of that region. 

 The best stock that he had seen was a cross of the 

 Alderney and what was called native. Those cows 

 will give about a gallon per day through the year, 

 without extra feed. He had tried some experiments 

 at different times to ascertain the value of the milk 

 of particular cows for making butter. In one in- 

 stance he churned a gallon of milk from each of his 

 cows, and he found the butter to vary from two Lo 

 eight ounces. He preferred not to have his heifers 

 come in till they were three years old. 



Mr. Sheldon related the results of an experi- 

 ment once made by him by churning the cream 

 from the milk of fifteen heifers, all of which came 

 in during the same week. He took the milk of the 

 same day from all of them, and he found that in 

 churning it, he got butter in three minutes from 

 the cream of one, in fifteen minutes from that of 

 eleven, and it took two hours to get it from that of 

 some of the other three. The Oakes cow was a re- 

 markable one, but he thought her progeny were 

 spoiled as milkers by the over-feeding of the cow. 



Mr, Proctor agreed that the failure of the Oakes 

 cow to rear a good progeny for miik was owing to 

 her high keeping. She produced 48-li lbs. of but- 

 ter in a year, and her high feeding accounts for that 

 also. No cow can be expected to have her strength 

 given in the production of milk and progeny equal 

 to herself at the same time. 



Mr, T, S. Fulton, of Vermont, did not believe 

 the reason the progeny of the Oakes cow was not 

 good for milk was ov/ing to her high feeding ; but 

 he thought it was because the cow had no character. 

 If she really had character her high keeping could 

 not have injured the milking qualities of her proge- 

 ny- 

 Mr, Fitch concurred with the view taken by 

 Messrs, Sheldon and Proctor, If the strength of a 

 cow was given to the production of milk, he did 

 not believe she could have a healthy progeny, 



Mr. Howard could not agree to that doctrine. 

 He did not know that the progeny of the Oakes 

 cow were constitutionally feeble; they were only 

 not good for milk. 



Mr. Sheldon said he considered it more impor- 

 tant that the bull should be from a cow that was 

 good for milk than that the progeny from h.im 

 should be so, 



Mr, Brown suggested with reference to the Illi- 

 nois cattle, that although his friend, Mr. Wetdek- 

 ^ELL, had re^ resented them as inferior, he had f^etn 



