46 DAIRY CATTLE AND MILK PRODUCTION 



At an early date this breed was afflicted by a color craze, 

 which injured it somewhat for several years. The fad was 

 for solid colors, which means no white markings, and for a 

 black tongue and switch. At present very little attention is 

 paid to color, although the majority of the Jerseys found in 

 this country have the solid colors and black points. In the 

 late seventies and early eighties a great boom struck the breed 

 in the United States. Cows of the St. Lambert breeding 

 brought enormous prices. As high as $ 25,000 was paid for 

 a single cow. In 1893 twenty-five animals each of the Jersey, 

 Guernsey, and Shorthorn breeds competed in a dairy test 

 at the World's Fair, Chicago. In both the production of 

 cheese and of butter the Jerseys won first place on total pro- 

 duction and economy of production. This gave the breed 

 greatly increased popularity, and their numbers increased 

 very rapidly in the following years. They also stood first 

 in the dairy test at the World's Fair in St. Louis, in 1904, 

 with the highest average production and greatest economy 

 of production of butter fat. 



Form and Characteristics. The Jersey is the smallest 

 of the dairy breeds, with the exception of the Kerry. The 

 weight of the average cow is generally between 800 and 900 

 pounds. The bulls, as a rule, range from 1200 to 1700 pounds. 

 The breeders in America have generally favored the larger 

 animals, and for this reason, and possibly also on account of 

 the more liberal feeding practiced, it is generally believed the 

 breed tends to gradually increase in size after a few genera- 

 tions in America. Cows weighing 1000 pounds are quite 

 common here, but unknown on the Jersey Island. Recently, 

 on account of the numerous importations and the wide use of 

 bulls of a smaller type from the Island, the tendency for the 



