20 DUAL PURPOSE CATTLE 



had made his selection of Necton-bred Red Polled cattle at the public 

 auction in the prevous October. When I prepared for Messrs Cassell 

 & Co. (Ltd.) an article on "Red Polled for the Stall and the Dairy," 

 to appear in the "Live Stock Journal Almanac" of 1883, Mr. Mason 

 kindly furnished me with precise details of milk production. Being 

 at Bale, to choose from Mr. John Hammond's well-known "Davy" 

 family a heifer, for the group of 10 heifers which I was in July, 



1882, asked by Col. J. B. Mead and Mr. Robert J. Kimball to select 

 for their farm in Vermont, Mr. Hammond, who was a veterinary 

 surgeon as well as a farmer, kindly met my request to record the 

 milk yield of 1451 Davy 27th HI. The cow which had produced her 

 second calf, on August 16th, had such an escutcheon as the Guenon 

 theory held to be the sign of a good milk yielder. The record was 

 made to April 30th, 1883, when, by Messrs. Cassell & Co.'s permission, 

 I was perparing the "Almanac" article for re-issue in the second 

 volume of the Herd Book. A monthly summary of the yield of four 

 cows in the Didlington herd from September 1st, 1882, to May 21st, 



1883, was also kindly made for me. These last were of the families 

 B 9, B 10, B 20, and V 2. In this way I was enabled to give the public 

 milk records which were evidence of heredity then well-nigh unpar- 

 alleled. (My American readers will find these records, with well- 

 nigh all my reprinted article, and also a re-production of the beauti- 

 ful wood-cut of a group of Red Polls drawn from three separate 

 photographs for the L. S. J. Almanac, contributed by one with whom 

 I had no communication direct or indirect, and put forth by him as 

 original, in the "United States Consular Reports: Cattle and Dairy 

 Farming," issued in 1888). Further, it is well to note that in the 

 "Live Stock Journal," annually from May, 1887, milk records of 

 whole Red Polled herds were published; that in 1887 a similar record 

 of the Whitlingham Herd prepared by me at Mr. Garrett Taylor's 

 request was circulated among the members of the "British Dairy 

 Farmers' Association," then visiting Norwich; and that from June, 

 1890, the publication of "whole herd" Milk Records was authorized 

 by the Red Polled Society, which had bnen established in April 1888. 

 Yet a Scotch authority on Milk Records asserts that "the present 

 system of taking milk records originated in Vejen, a small parish 

 in that part of Denmark known as Jutland ... in the beginning 

 of the year 1895," and that it was also begun in Holland and in Swe- 

 den in 1897. It is a matter of fact which anybody may see in Vol. 

 XIII of the Red Polled Herd Book (Vol. VIII of the American edition) 

 that in the year 1895 there were 13 whole herd milk Red Polled records 

 (320 cows) laid before the public, all well authenticated. I can per- 

 sonally vouch for the truth of the Whitlingham record of the 126 

 cows for that year. I regularly inspected the milking from time to 

 time, was supplied with the weekly and monthly sheets; calculated 

 the total returns, and made full notes with grass feed results, for 

 an annual issue by Mr. Taylor, on milk yield totals and inheritance, 

 year by year, from 1887 to the spring of 1904. It may perhaps, be 

 granted that my voluntary work of the kind was equal to that of a 

 paid official, who probably has had fewer opportunities of acquiring 

 knowledge. 



PROGRESSIVE MILK INHERITANCE 



The foundation of Al Family in the Elmham Group was 427 

 Primrose. She was in the herd when, in the fifties,' Mr. Thomas 

 Fulcher was appointed Estate Agent, with direction of the home 

 farms. He found Live Stock Account Books from the year 1849. 



