MG CATTLE AND DAIRY FARMING. 



third year. The color is generally a dark red, sometimes piebald. 

 Limbs are short and bones small. Horns are short, nearly straight, 

 blunt and ugly in form, usually of about equal size from base to tip. 

 Milk and its components are little used by the people, and I cannot 

 learn that butter or cheese is ever made, in this part of the Empire at 

 least. The only estimate to be relied upon that-I can give of their 

 milking qualities I have obtained of a foreigner, who keeps a small dairy 

 to accommodate the foreign population with milk only. From his ex- 

 perience about 3 quarts per day is the highest average. The flesh 

 makes good beef when decently fed, but the animals are not killed until 

 they are past breeding and too old for work. The dried skin weighs 

 about 27 to 28 pounds, and the bones and offal are comparatively small. 

 Calves are small, and the first year develop slowly. One famUiar with 

 fine milkers in the United States is surprised at the very small udders 

 of 1 hese cows, and their teats are very small and diminutive. The milk 

 veins, however, are large, and whether culture and careful breeding 

 would develop profitable qualities only exjierimeutal trial can decide. 

 The origin of the breed I cannot discover, but, from all I can learn, it 

 seems to have been here as long as the Chinaman himself. The current 

 value per head is not over ten and a half gold dollars. 



THE "WATER BUFFALO OF THE TANG-TSE. 



The water Buffalo is the only other bovine in this region. It is the 

 same animal that is found in India and Egypt. Webster's Unabridged 

 Dictionary, illustrated edition of 1878, has a quite accurate represen- 

 tation of the animal. It is there described zoologically as " a species 

 of the genus Bos (Bos bubalus), originally from India, but now found in 

 most of the warmer countrius of the eastern continent. It is larger and 

 less docile than the common ox, and is fond of marshy places and 

 rivers." This is a very correct idea of it. The cow is as large as a 

 common ox in the United States. It is of a dun or slate color, with 

 coarse hair, bristly and sparse. It comes to maturity in the fourth 

 year, and gestates once in eighteen months thereafter, producing eight 

 oi' nine calves in a life-time, which is about eighteen years. The young 

 are broken to work in the second year, and the cows are quite as much 

 used for milk as the commoner small breed, yielding a third more. It 

 will perform double the labor of the small animals, and might be worth 

 testing as a draft animal, but it is not to be forgotten that it is very 

 sluggish at work, moving very slowly, and is not infrequently fierce 

 and intractable. It will certainly thrive on much poorer food than our 

 cattle at home, and it makes very good beef. The average weight of 

 cows is 700 pounds, and of bulls and oxen 850 to 950 pounds. Its cur- 

 rent value is $15 to $18 per head. 



METHODS OF HOUSING AND FEEDING. 



When housed at all, bamboo sheds are provided— poor affairs at the 

 best, and yet about as good as the people who own them occupy. 



Feeding for either class of the cattle described is only done in the 

 wmter months, when vegetation is destroyed ; then wheat straw, rice 

 straw, and sweet-potato vines are fed to them. The last are esteemed 

 their best food. In the open season thev are left to forage for them- 

 selves, browsing upon wild grass, bamboo shoots, and the foliage of 

 the reeds that cover the marshes, or whatever else they can pick up. 

 They are unrestricted in range by either fence or wail, and when for- 



