CHAPTER XXVIII. 



MILK COWS THEIR SELECTION. 



We have elsewhere remarked on the hreeding of milk cows; 

 but a special chapter is necessary to fully enforce our ideas on so 

 important a branch of this treatise. The great mass of our 

 dairy cows are yet of the common, or native kind — good, per- 

 haps, in the main, but, in the mass of them, capable of great 

 improvement in their lacteal qualities. Could we, by a dash of 

 the pen, at once convert them all into high grades, of one or 

 more of the established milking breeds, it would add a large per- 

 centage to the ordinary yield of milk now obtained from them, 

 and the consequent profit in their use. But, that being impossi- 

 ble, our only course is to show how we can select the best, and 

 obtain from them an average of one-fourth, or one-third more 

 milk, butter, and cheese, than they now yield, and at little, or no 

 more expense in keeping — thus adding largely to the productive 

 capital invested in them. 



"We now labor under two important difiBculties in using the 

 common cows of our country. One is, their average low capacity 

 for yielding milk; the other is the uncertainty in their selection 

 for that purpose, when young, and untried. These difficulties 

 are radical, and cannot be remedied short of many years of time 

 in selection and breeding, on the part of both cows and bulls, 

 and then with still uncertain results; while to make sure of per- 

 manent, certain, and unfailing milkers, we have only to resort to 

 breeds already long established, and which are measurably within 

 our reach. We find that in these estabhshed milking breeds, they 



