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VOLUME 1. 



ROCHESTER, MAY 14, 1831. 



NUMBER 19. 



THE GENESEE FARMER 



AND GARDENER'S JOURNAL. 



Hovoted to Agriculture, Horticulture, Domcctic Kcodo 



my, &c. &c 



N. GOODStLL. EDITOR. 



Published on Saturdays, at $2 50 per annum, 



payable in six months, or at $'i 00. it paid at the 



,'inie of subscribing, by LorHt r Tucker & Co 



at the office of the Rochester Daily Advertiser. 



SELECTIONS. 



From the American Farmer. 



BAKEWELL SHEEP AND DEVON 

 CATTLE. 



Philadelphia, March 29, 1831. 

 Mr. Smith — Permit me to make a few 

 ■ ibservations on the subject of Bakewell sheep 

 and Devonshire cattle ; if yon think them 

 worthy a place in your useful paper for the 

 benefit of the, public, you are at liberty to 

 publish them. It has been frequently re- 

 quested of me, verbally and also by letter, 

 from various parts of the United States, to 

 give my candid opinion which is the best 

 sheep and cattle for the American farmer to 

 turn his attention to. I have for a number 

 of years past given the preference to Devon 

 attle and Bakewell sheep, and I have turn- 

 ed my attention to them in preference to all 

 others; and I still am convinced they are 

 decidedly the best breed in the United States. 

 I have information from a large proportion 

 of the best judges which I have become ac- 

 quainted with, for the two last fall and win- 

 ter seasons in the New- York cattle market, 

 in which I have spent about four months in 

 each of the two last years, in making sales of 

 fat cattle and Bakewell sheep to a large a- 

 niount. When I say best judges, I mean 

 the grazier, drover, farmer and butcher ; most 

 of them have come to the conclusion with 

 myself, that they are the breeds which prac- 

 tical men ought to turn their attention to. 

 The New-York cattle market is supplied 

 from most of the states in the Union ; for 

 instance, Ohio sends annually from eighty 

 to one hundred thousand dollars in fat cat- 

 'le, Virginia a large quantity, Pennsylvania 

 of itself in the four months which 1 attend- 

 ed, upwards of one hundred thousand dol- 

 lars, and I should say upwards of double that 

 amount annually. New-York, New-Jersey, 

 Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island, 

 their proportions ; not uncommon to see on 

 a market day upwards of fourteen hundred 

 head of cattle of different breeds. This is 

 the place for judgment -and observation on 

 the various kinds ; you might stand on an 

 elevated platform erected for the accommo- 

 dation of the butchers and graziers,and view 

 the different enclosures provided for the 

 purpose of offering this large number of cat- 

 tle for sale, and easily behold the beautiful 

 dark red Devons, and point them out from 

 all others; there is something peculiar in 

 their color. I have the breed from black 

 cows, in fact nearly all colors, and the calves 

 of half and three-quarter blooded are gen- 

 erally red. I do not remember more than 

 about four full-blooded ones in my time in 

 this country being fattened for the market, 

 but a vast number of halves, three-quarters, 

 and seven-eighths ; the four I have refer- 

 ence to, the two fed by Mr. Hurlbut, Win- 

 chester, Connecticut, and I cannot answer 

 for their being full-blooded, my information 



respecting these two being derived from 

 butchers and drovers. For further informa- 

 tion reference might be had to your paper. 

 No. 02, Vol. 12th. I fatted a heifer four 

 years ago, slaughtered in Philadelphia, ad- 

 mired for her beauty and fatness ; also one 

 fattened by Mr. Thompson of Baltimore, 

 which excelled all for weight, agreeably to 

 sire and appearance when alive, exceeding 

 the butcher's judgment in weight when 

 slaughtered. Their good quality as milkers 

 are highly spoken of; my own experience 

 is not sufficient to state the quantity of milk 

 they give at a milking. My full-blood calves 

 have always been suffered to run with the 

 cows until they generally weaned them- 

 selves. But surely Mr. Hurlbut would not 

 keep bad milkers to make an hundred and 

 fifty thousand pounds of cheese annually 

 for Baltimore market, as stated in your pa- 

 per, March 11, No. 52, Vol. 12. But I will 

 state what Mr. Bloomfield, a gentleman of 

 unquestionable veracity, said when on a visit 

 to this country, and at my house in Dela- 

 ware, about six years ago. He had been 

 living under Mr. Coke, Devonshire, Eng. 

 Being his principal man to oversee his cat- 

 tle, he (Mr.B.) stated, for several weeks pre- 

 vious to his leaving England, he had made 

 from twenty cows, 200 pounds of butter per 

 week — ten pounds for each cow, and I feel 

 assured they must give rich milk, for the 

 calves are always remarkably fat. No bet- 

 ter proof for their giving good milk. Mr. 

 Caleb Churchman, residing near Philadel- 

 phia, a considerable drover of lean stock, 

 has been purchasing from the farmers called 

 the Holland Company settlers in the state of 

 New- York. He (Mr. C.) told me about two 

 eeks ago, that Devon cattle had taken the 

 lead in preference to every other breed in 

 that country. I returned from New- York 

 on the 22d inst. ; while there T was told by 

 the most respectable butchers and drovers 

 in that market, that the two steers of Mr. 

 Hurlbut weighed, one 1528, the other 1488 

 pounds nett beef, and were allowed by all 

 I conversed with, to be the best pair of oxen 

 ever seen in that city, not only for their 

 weight proportionably to their size, but a 

 beautiful color, small bone, and very fine, 



ich beef. 

 Thirty-seven of the forty-three Bakewell 



heep I made mention of in your paper, No. 

 23, Vol. 12, were slaughtered last week in 

 New-York, and allowed by good judges to 

 be the best ever exhibited in that city. 1 

 sold them to Mr. John Penen for 12 1-2 cts. 

 per lb., and the thirty-seven when dressed, 

 weight, 4,045 lbs., total amount g505,62 1-2, 

 weighed in the presence of a number of res- 

 pectable gentlemen. When it is considered 

 that twenty-one of these sheep were but one 

 year old past, fifteen but two years old past, 

 with one of four years old this spring, you 

 will be ready to say with me, that this breed 

 of sheep, and the Devon cattle, are worthy 

 the attention of the American grazier, breed- 

 ers, and keepers of sheep, in preference to 

 all others. The New-York butchers will 

 tell you they make the best lambs that come 

 to that market. An objection has frequent- 

 ly been made, that "they make the mutton 

 too fat ;" this is remedied by killing them at 

 early age. If the Bakewell can be made to 

 excel the common sheep in weight at the age 

 of one year, when you have to keep the com- 



mon sheep four years to bring him to the 

 same weight, surely the preference should 

 be given to the Bakewell. Another good 

 quality, they have always been considered to 

 carry the greatest weight of flesh to a smal- 

 ler proportion of bone than any other sheep 

 in the world. I feel I shall be tedious with' 

 my subject on sheep and cattle at this time ; 

 but not seeing your paper of the 18th inst. 

 till I had prepared the above to be forwarded 

 to you, and feeling a desire to give a more 

 minute statement of the several weights ol 

 my thirty-seven wethers for the information 

 of our Chester county friends, and Mr. Fow 

 of Philadelphia, their several weights are as 

 follows : 



1,173 1,042 1,141 



Take the twenty-two largest weights mar- 

 ked thus,* and you will find the average of 

 each sheep is upwarbs of 30 lbs. per quarter. 

 It must also be considered they were killed 

 on Wednesday morning, which was the case, 

 and not weighed till the Friday afternoon 

 following, all this time hanging in an open 

 shed, with their plucks taken out and heads 

 off, exposed to a drying wind, which must 

 have made the weight less, for each sheep 

 at least from two to four lbs. than it would 

 have been if they had been slaughtered, 

 weighed the next and hung up in a cellar, 

 which is the general method adopted in Phil- 

 adelphia and Baltimore. Again, you will 

 see they were not weighed by half pounds, 

 but by good weight given by the pound; you 

 will be inclined to conclude with myself, 

 had they been weighed by other standards 

 they would have been made to weigh consid- 

 erably more. But their weight is sufficient 

 to excel all other lots of sheep of the same 

 number on record in this country, being all 

 rai»ed from lambs and fatted by myself. It 

 has been admitted by a number of English 

 gentlemen acquainted with the feeding dis- 

 tricts in England, they never saw a greater 

 display of fine mutton exhibited at any one 

 time ; I might include all the butchers and 

 drovers; they said they far excelled all oth- 

 ers ever slaughtered in the city of N. York. 

 Mr. J. Perren, the gentlemen who purchas- 

 ed them, was of the opinion they carried ten 

 pounds of wool each ; if so, their skins were 

 worth five dollars each. The weight of tin. 

 loose fat I neglected to obtain ; but one of 

 their cauls was weighed at the time of their 

 being taken out of the sheep, which weighed 

 twenty pounds : this was considered a great 

 curiosity, exceeding all they had ever seen 

 The mode of feeding these sheep was noth- 

 ing more than common, running with others 

 on good pasture during the summer, no grain 

 given to them till taken to the sheep yard 

 about the 1st of December : their food prin- 

 cipally the ruta baga turnip, and good up- 

 land hay, with a small proportion of con; 

 and oats per day. 



Yours, most truly, John Barney 



