BREEDING DAIRY COWS. 257 



calves he may get, as the cows which he is to serve have, through 

 their "common" ancestry, a share of bad blood also. If it be 

 said there is no probability of that, the answer is, there is a 

 possibility, and that risk should be avoided. The inevitable 

 tendency of interbreeding grades witli each other, is to throw out 

 all sorts of intermixtures of the ancestral blood, and all improve- 

 ment in the herd there stops — it retrogrades, even, from the very 

 time the grade bull is adopted. It may be said "the Ayrshires 

 were so made." True, but it took a hundred years so to make 

 them into an established breed, and they are still kept up with 

 the most painstaking care and selection; and no three, or four, 

 or half a dozen crosses of the best pure blood of any breed, on 

 our native cows, can be trusted to perpetuate, within themselves 

 only, their qualities so recently and artificially bred up. Aside 

 from this, the ultimate destination of the dairy cow is the sham- 

 bles; and as a good one, if of an improved breed, will, in almost 

 every instance, when done for the pail, feed well, a risk of making 

 the most of her in that particular, when at so trifling a cost as 

 the keeping a pure bred bull, should not be ventured. No; 

 keep on with the thorough bred bull. If obtained at two years, 

 he will last till he is six, eight, or ten years old, breeding him 

 to his own daughters, and even granddaughters, before he is 

 discarded. If "blood" in an animal is good for anything, that 

 blood should be concentrated in his descendants — fixed so as to 

 be retained in his stock, where it will exercise its full power and 

 faculty in reproduction. It is quite as necessary in the grade as 

 in the thorough bred. There is no danger in in-and-in breeding 

 from such wide affinities in the first parents, for two or three 

 generations. 



DO NOT CHANGE THE BREED. 



It is presumed that the breeder of dairy cows has selected for 

 his use, that race which, on a deliberate examination of his soil, 

 climate, and locahty, is the best adapted for his purposes. If, on 



