No. 4. 



Short-horns as Milkers. 



Ill 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 



Short-horus as Milkers. 



Many inquiries have arisen in our country 

 in relation to the comparative excellence of 

 the Short-horns and natives as dairy stock, 

 and frequent attempts have been made to 

 illicit something' trom their owners on this 

 subject; results have been called for, weights 

 of butter and cheese have been demanded ; 

 not individual cases — not here and there a 

 cow — they " prove nothing ;" but the pro- 

 ducts of some ten or twenty cows is claimed; 

 in fact, dairy statistics, such as every man 

 gives; and these calls are made by those 

 ■who claim to be intelligent, observing, dis- 

 criminating men, competent to examine into 

 and give the agricultural history, not only 

 of a county, or a State, but it may be of a 

 whole country; and yet the unreasonable- 

 ness of such inquiries never entered their 

 minds; while the Short-horn breeders ap- 

 peared to think the absurdity of the demand 

 was too self evident to claim their attention. 

 I will therefore venture to offer a few sug- 

 gestions of my own, based on the common 

 sense and known facts of the case, rather 

 than on any knowledge of the science or 

 theory of breeds, or breeding, and will with 

 your leave, Mr. Editor, form them a little to 

 meet the remarks of Mr. James T. Norton, 

 which I find in your excellent paper for 

 August. These remarks commence with 

 an encomium on Mr. Sotham, for having de 

 termined to ascertain the milking property 

 of the " Herefords ;" and this too, "for the 

 benefit of the public !" he is therefore making 

 dairy and feeding his calves on flax-seed jelly ; 

 nor do I doubt that in so doing, Mr. Sotham 

 is going ahead on the right principle ; indeed 

 I am rather more disposed to think he can 

 make a larger, better, fatter calf, in this 

 way than in any other, or as a breeder he 

 would not adopt it. But with the Herefords 

 we have now nothing to do, so let us on to 

 the subject in question. I presume Mr, 

 Norton will readily concede, that in Eng- 

 land, whence we have received all our 

 Short-horn stock, no doubts are now enter- 

 tained of their being otherwise than great 

 milkers, and in further evidence of this 

 being an acknowledged property of the 

 breed, I will ask his attention to another 

 fact — which is, that the great establishments 

 for supplying the cities and towns with milk, 

 use almost exclusively cows of this breed, 

 and where from 700 to 1000 are found stand- 

 ing under the sheds of one man. Is this 

 proof enough 1 I should think to an unpre- 

 judiced mind it might be ; for where so large 

 a number of cows are milked daily, a quart 

 more or less per cow, would be either a 



ruinous or profitable item in the amount; 

 and cow-keeping being of itself a separate 

 business, the question as to which are the 

 most productive cows, has been most care- 

 fully determined by experience — may we 

 not then consider such a decision in favour 

 of the Short-horns final, as to their dairy 

 excellence at home, where alone they are 

 in sufficient numbers to admit of the test so 

 loudly called for. I am not myself aware 

 of anything in this country, that should 

 change the characteristics of a breed when 

 imported, else it would be great folly to in- 

 cur the expense and risk. For aught I see, 

 a Devon remains a Devon, in all the features 

 which mark the breed ; a Hereford is still a 

 Hereford, and will feed, and fat, and work 

 as well here as in England ; the Ayrshires, 

 I am assured, retain their milking property; 

 why then should not the Short-horns be the 

 same sluggish, heavy, milking animals here, 

 that they are at home 1 It were as rational 

 to suppose they had given up their quiet, in- 

 dolent habits, and become smart, active work- 

 ing oxen, as to suppose they had changed 

 their character as a dairy stock; — for in- 

 stance, Mr. Powell's cow Belinda, was im- 

 ported probably for her extraordinary milk- 

 ing property; was it lessened when she 

 made at the rate of twenty and a half 

 pounds of butter a week, under the most 

 careftil observation of a committee'? Hav- 

 ing cited herds of seven hundred to a thou- 

 sand cows, who are milked all the year 

 round, I may venture on this " isolated" in- 

 stance, not to establish the claims of Short- 

 horns to deep milking, but to show that a 

 good milker in England, continued to be so 

 in America; and I presume I could obtain 

 corroborating testimony derived from many 

 a " ship's cow," that has been brought over 

 to this country and left. 



For the present, at least, I presume Mr. 

 Norton must content himself with " isolated 

 cases" of superior milking, for there is not, 

 to my knowledge, a single dairy of Short- 

 horns in the country ; nor is it likely there 

 will be, while they are in themselves so 

 costly, and their produce pays such remune- 

 rating prices to breeders. With tliese latter, 

 the desired product is the calf, and not but- 

 ter or cheese ; nor can the Short-horn man 

 raise so fine, so large, so fat a calf, and at 

 so small an expense, as at the foot of its 

 dam ;* and when raised, it has heretofore 

 brought the owner probably twice as much 

 in dollars and cents — no bad "proof" — as 

 the greatest dairy produce Mr. Norton ever 

 obtained from the best cow of his native 



* The idea of a calf being able to take the milk of 

 two covps, is purely Herefordshire. 



