182 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



A Member: I don't wish to criticize but I don't believe that we should 

 be blamed. The blame should come on the recording association of cur 

 fine breeds of cattle. You are compelled to do it when the animal is young 

 and you cannot tell then' what it will develop to. Then the animals are 

 cast on the market and the owners try to get something out of them be- 

 fore they are fully developed. 



Mr. Hostetter: I think the great secret of this whole thing, and it is 

 something we will have to remedy, is the fact the farmers have got it into 

 their heads that there is a general purpose cow, a cow that he is going to 

 breed for everything. When our country becomes more settled in certain 

 sections our cows will improve in the hands of the average farmer. We 

 will have to teach the average farmer on this subject. It takes ages for 

 cows to reach this standard. 



Prof. Plumb: They have been breeding cows for centuries at my 

 native town in Massachusetts. It was settled in 1669, and the Pilgrims 

 landed in Plymouth Rock in 1620 and Dutch cattle was brought over up- 

 to 1700. Now the Ayreshire bree'i, as uniform a breed of cattle in the 

 world, has only been known about 100 years. When we think of it the 

 improvement on live stock dates from after the revolutionary war. It is 

 not much more than 100 years old. I was driving along in Eastern 

 Indiana and was talking about these mixed breeds and I looked on one 

 side of the road and there was four different breeds of cattle in that field. 

 They had Holstein, Jerseys, Short Horns, and something else all mixed 

 up. W'hile I have not traveled all over the States, I have travelled con- 

 siderably and I am not satisfied with this breeding question. 



Mr. Dietz: It always does damage when the breed of pure blood 

 cattle are obliged to be mixed, for they will always be breed of scrubs, 

 and the progeny carries the name under which the females were sold, but 

 have been bred down and down and instead of being fifteen-sixteenths of 

 something, they are one- sixteenth of something. The breeder of pure 

 blood cattle ought to be a seller of males and not of females. His sales 

 of males ought to be so well supported that he could sell his culled females 

 to his butcher. I hold that the owners of the great breeding herds ought 



