6 MODERN MILK GOATS 



and semi-arid areas, had always held in high esteem the 

 little milk animals who fitted best into the environment 

 of their country. Wherever the Spanish settlers went, 

 the goat followed them. She fomid in this vast new 

 land of mountains and high plateaus conditions not un- 

 like those of her native home. Whether she was turned 

 loose to go back to the care of Mother Nature and her 

 own wits, or whether she remained in the care of man, 

 she prospered and increased. Lacking expert care, slie 

 increased, to be sure, in numbers rather than in excellence 

 of type. Still it is remarkable that in the great bands of 

 " native " goats that range Mexico and the Southwest 

 to-day, there are many animals that persistently main- 

 tain the dairy type, and that respond to care and atten- 

 tion with an excellent yield of milk, although in the semi- 

 wild conditions of their life for the past two hundred 

 years they have been bred solely for their meat and hides. 

 Yet these multitudinous descendants of the Spanish 

 goats of the early settlers were destined to play an im- 

 portant part in the development of the milk goat indus- 

 try of the United States, whose own goats, few in 

 number, were despised and neglected. 



Dawn of New Interest. — With the coming of the 

 twentieth century, the wiser leaders of our agricultural 

 hfe were already beginning to see ahead of us those 

 crowded and intensive conditions in which the milk goat 



