118 CATTLE AND - 1> AIK Y FARMING 



the cow in some way to keep her from damaging the allotment-^like crops. The Bel- 

 gians, whoso i'arms are of the same small allotment type, have met the same difficulty 

 in a different way ; they keep their cows slmt up, and carry them all their fodder. 

 The Jersey method is more natural and wholesome, less laborious, and has produced 

 better results. It has originated a new type, the best butter cow in the world, unique 

 also in gentleness and beauty. The advantages wo claim for tethering are : 



(a) Economy of food. Some good judges have put this as high as 50percent. They 

 assert that three tethered cows may be kept where otherwise two could only be kept. 

 But no one in Jersey is willing to put it lower than one-third; where three only could 

 find pasture loose, one may increase his stock one-third and keep four cows if he teth- 

 ers them. The grass is eaten up clean, iine and coarse alike ; none is left and none 

 spoiled. 



(6) The feed is regular and equal. The cow is not pampered one day and starved 

 the next ; its appetite is not spoiled, nor its digestion deranged. 



(c) It gives perfect command of the food supply. A cow can have much or little, 

 a long tether or a short one; it can be confined to a poor corner or favored with the 

 fat of the land, as may be necessary or desirable. 



(d) It saves fences and economizes food that would otherwise be wasted, from the 

 impossibility of letting in a loose cow to graze it. 



(e) The cow is more gentle. Its keeper is its good genius, on whom it is constantly 

 dependent for all it wants. Its docility (and affection even) follows as a matter of 

 course. 



(/) It is doubtless to the tether that our Jersey cows are indebted for their exquisite 

 fineness of limb, their airy grace, and general elegance of proportions and appearance. 



(g) More butter is obtained. Nothing is so destructive to animal fat, whether on 

 the llesh or in the udder, as motion and exercise. This is so well known as to be pro- 

 verbial, yet how often is it overlooked. The same farmer who fats his bullocks quietly 

 in a stall will give his cows the run of a large pasture, as if they were in training for 

 a race. 



Bearing calves ~by hand in Jersey. Much importance is attached to this practice in 

 Jersey. The calf is never allowed to suck at all, and has, therefore, never to be weaned. 

 The rearer has perfect command of the calf's food and can vary it as needed. Like 

 tethering, it increases the animal's docility and its attachment to its attendant, oa 

 whom it has to depend from the very first. The effect on the cow is equally good. 

 Having never suckled her calf, she does not fret when it is taken from her*. More im- 

 portant still, having never yielded her milk in any way but to the gentle persuasion 

 of the milkmaid's hand, she is not tempted to withhold it. 



Milk vs. butter yield. Mr. Walker says : 



While cows giving exceptionally large quantities of milk will sometimes make large 

 butter tests, as a rule the two things do not go together ; they are inconsistent with 

 each other. Breeding for quantity of milk is sure to depreciate the quality and re- 

 duce the butter yield. It is the opinion of many of the most skilful breeders of Jer- 

 sey, and those of longest experience, that by judicious selection of individuals from 

 particular families it would be far easier to carry the milk yield of a family of Jerseys 

 from an annual average yield of 6 quarts of milk per day up to 12 quarts per day than 

 it would be to carry an annual' daily average yield of butter from 12 ounces up to 18 

 ounces per day. That is to say, it would take a less number of generations from the 

 cows with which the breeder started to double the flow of milk of a family than to 

 increase their butter yield by one-half. In other words, ifc is a problem of far more 

 difficulty to increase the butter yield of cows than to increase their milk yield. Every 

 careful observer knows that the number of quarts a cow is giving will fall off very 

 considerably without materially reducing the pounds of butter she will make. 



It has taken centuries to produce the richness of milk of the Jersey cows. It has 

 been done and is being done against the ordinary workings of the laws of nature. It 

 is against natural laws that the milk from a cow should be so rich as to kill her calf, 

 and the struggle of nature is to reduce the richness by increasing the quantity ; there- 

 fore the breeder must never attempt to increase his butter yield by coupling an ani- 

 mal from a family. yielding a large quantity of milk of poor quality with those giving 

 rich milk in less quantity. The result, as a rule, must, in the nature of things, be the 

 opposite of that which the breeder seeks. The only way to maintain, to say nothing 

 of increasing, the butter product of any family that is making exceptionally large 

 yields of butter, is to couple those animals that spring from the very best specimens in 

 the same family, when not already in-bred too far, and of the very best proved out- 

 cross, when out-crossing is desirable. 



The thing to be done with the Jerseys giving large quantities of milk of inferior 

 quality is to abandon them to milkmen, whose only object is quantity of milk, not 

 quality. They have a keen eye for large milkers among Jerseys, as every one knows 

 who owns Jerseys, or who buys Jersey milk in any city or large town. Breed from 



