A FARMER'S OPINION. 43 



feeding for the butcher, and only one short-horn. When 

 asked the reason of this, he replied, " I am a farmer 

 myself, and have to pay high rent, and I must feed 

 the cattle that pay me best. Perhaps you think it 

 would be more in fashion to cover my fields with short- 

 horns ; but I must look to the net profit, and I get much 

 better with the Herefords. The short-horns are too full 

 of fat and make too little tallow, and they consequently 

 sell too low in the Smithfield market. Our Herefords 

 are better, and they sell better." 



The Herefords are far less generally spread over 

 England than the improved short-horns. They have 

 seldom been bred for milk, as some families of the 

 short-horns have ; and it is not very unusual to find 

 pure-bred cows incapable of supplying milk sufficient 

 to nourish their calves. This system was pursued es- 

 pecially by Mr. Price, a skilful Hereford breeder, who 

 sacrified everything to form, disregarding milking prop- 

 erties, breeding often from near relations, and thus fix- 

 ing the fault incident to his system more or less perma- 

 nently in the descendants of his stock. 



The Herefords have been brought to this country, to 

 some extent, and several fine herds exist in different 

 sections ; the earliest importations being those of Henry 

 Clay, of Kentucky, in 1817. The figures of the two 

 animals of this breed presented in this connection rep- 

 resent a bull and cow bred at the State Farm, in Massa- 

 chusetts, and are good specimens of the breed. 



The want of care and attention to the udder, soon 

 after calving, especially if the cow be on luxuriant 

 grass, often injures her milking properties exceedingly. 

 The practice in the county of Hereford has generally 

 been to let the calves suckle from four to six months, 

 and bull-calves often run eight months with the cow. 

 But their dairy qualities are perhaps as good as those 



