188 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



selecting animals that will readily fatten and turn them as they 

 do into beef before they become old and worn-out, your coarse 

 grains, your bran and ship-stuffs, it seems to me, if fed up and 

 converted into milk, beef and bacon, must bring more money 

 than to ship them to market. 



BREEDING STOCK FOR THE DAIRY. 



A great many writers urge upon dairymen the breeding of a 

 race of cattle for milk alone. Mr. Fish, of Herkimer, experi- 

 mented in that way. He improved his herd so that it averaged 

 a yield of between eight hundred and nine hundred pounds of 

 cheese per cow ; but the constitution of the animals became so 

 impaired and weakened that it did not prove profitable. 



Cows that yield five hundred to six hundred pounds of 

 cheese, and then can be easily made ready for the butcher, 

 are all that we should ask. Milch cows are liable to many 

 accidents ; some prove inferior for the dairy, lose a portion of 

 the udder, fail in milk early, or run farrow. Such animals, if 

 of a breed that will fatten rapidly, can be cheaply turned into 

 beef, and if they have not proved profitable for the dairy, are 

 made to pay a profit for the shambles. 



I went to Europe in 1866, for the American Dairymen's Asso- 

 ciation, and examined the different methods of cheese-making 

 in England. ***** 



I found various processes in operation in the various shires 

 or counties. In all these, excepting the Cheddar process, I was 

 greatly disappointed. The Cheshire, the Wiltshire, the Double 

 and Single Gloucester, and other methods, are defective and 

 extremely laborious. 



The implements are outlandish, and belong to a past age of 

 the world. The dairy people in the different districts are tena- 

 cious of their practice, and adhere to it with a dogged perti- 

 nacity, nothwithstanding the Cheddar dairymen, under their 

 improved system, are beating them in the markets from ten to 

 thirty shillings sterling the hundred weight. Much of this cheese 

 is manufactured by guess, and varies in character according to 

 the skill and experience of the dairymaid. There is scarcely a 

 thing in any of these processes (the Cheddar excepted) that 

 would be of any service to us, and if introduced here would be 

 a positive damage. American cheese is richer and better made, 



