50 ■ THE dairyman's MANUAL. 



breeds, butter and cheese would be very scarce commodi- 

 ties, and worth at least five dollars per pound, until the 

 slow increase of these pure bred cattle su^Dplied the gen- 

 eral demand. Of the 11,000,000 cows in the United 

 States, there are not more than 100,000 cows of these pure 

 breeds. The 10,900,000 left are the natives, so much 

 despised by the breeders of the herd-book stocks. They 

 are the foundation and material of the grand structure 

 of our dairy industr}', and supply the public demand for 

 dairy products, the pure breeds are the gilding and orna- 

 mentation of the structure. It is important then that 

 dairymen and farmers should give their most careful and 

 untiring efforts to the improvement of what is known 

 as our native stock — to v\'bich it is the fashion of some 

 thoughtless breeders and writers to apply the offensive, 

 opprobrious, and wholly undeserved name of '^ scrubs" — 

 and to add to their productive value by skillful selection, 

 judicious breeding, liberal feeding, and the exercise of the 

 most considerate care and rearing. In future chapters 

 this part of the business of the dairyman will be as fully 

 considered as space will admit. 



CHAPTER IV. 



BREEDING AND REARING DAIRY COWS. 



The cows are the dairyman's machines for changing 

 food into more salable and valuable products. As ma- 

 chines are valuable in proportion to the effective work 

 they perform, so cows are to be valued for the amount of 

 milk and butter they can produce from a certain quantity 

 of food. The cow which yields half a pound of butter 

 daily is worth no more than half as much as one that 

 produces one pound per day, and in fact less than that, 



