ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 89 



or discontented disposition. They thrive on ordinary care and respond well 

 to extra care. They are uniform in t heir characteristics; their calves are 

 very rapid growers. All this is generally known. 



What I wish to dwell upon in this paper is the advantage of using the 

 Brown Swiss as a breed for crossing with native cows and with grades of 

 other breeds. To answer this purpose the characteristics of the breed 

 should be obviously and permanently reproduced in the first and second 

 crosses, otherwise the results would be too remote to be of the highest 

 practical value. 



Are these characteristics so produced in the half bloods and three-quar- 

 ter bloods as well as in the higher grades? This is a question which can 

 not be answered by statistics. We shall have to depend on individual (cs- 

 timony and observation for the answer, but I can point to numerous neigh- 

 borhoods and sections of the country where highly satisfactory results of 

 this sort have been obtained. It is, of course, easy in passing through a dairy 

 country, to look at the herds in the pasture and tell what kind of a bull is be- 

 ing used, a Holstein bull or a Jersey bull when used with common cows will 

 mark the herd as grades of the one or the other breeds, but it is always per- 

 fectly obvious that the cattle in question are grades and not pure breeds. 

 The point that I make is that the uses of Swiss bulls under such circum- 

 stances will produce, even in the first and second generations, a large pro- 

 portion of calves that will require close observation to determine 

 whether they are grades or full bloods, and this in spite of the fact that 

 the characteristics of the Swiss breed are very pronounced. The results 

 in color and shape and special points of peculiarity occur in spite of great 

 diversities in the cows that are started with. Not only are points of 

 shape and color reproduced and the tendency to quiet attention to busi- 

 ness and to convert food first into milk and then into meat is found in 

 the first grades. In other words, the Swiss breed is a very prepotent 

 one. 



We have tried in our own herd some experiments in the way of crossing 

 one pure blood with another, for instance, breeding pure Jersey or Holstein 

 cows to Swiss bulls. The results have been highly interesting in many 



