AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
promises made other agricultural friends of 
some half dozen States, I present you for 
publication, the following statement of the 
banner milk cow of the Union! honored with 
first premiums at our State and National 
Fairs in October last. 
“Madame Giantess” is a thorough bred 
cow, of the Patton and Short Horn cross, an 
orange red and white, variegated with clus¬ 
ters of beautiful spots on the back, resem¬ 
bling the English grape. Her horns are 
symmetrically fine, with a slight inclination 
upward. Age 7 years ; weight in the last 
fifteen months, owing to condition, from 
1,600 to 2,000 pounds! 
Milk and Butter Record. —In June, 1854, in 
ten successive days, Giantess gave 768 lbs. 
of milk, her calf then 4| months old, 26 lbs. 
making a pound of butter. In May she gave 
on the average, being grain fed and let to 
grass, 88 lbs. of milk per day. On one occa¬ 
sion she produced 26 lbs. of milk in six 
hours!' 
Gross Beef Record. —Giantess iias raised 
two calves this year, her own, a bull calf, 
and an orphan, a heifer, he being calved 
January 30, 1854, she March 16, 1854. The 
weight of the calves on October 1st was 
1,425 pounds, his weight 925 pounds. The 
calves, until the 1st of September, had not 
been fed anything in the shape or of the na¬ 
ture of grain, reared entirely upon milk pro¬ 
duced by Giantess, with the grass found in 
their lot. I think I might challenge the 
world to a comparison ! 
Treatment of Cow. —Since I purchased her 
in August, 1853, Giantess has had plenty of 
grain-feed when necessary, and in grass sea¬ 
son, a variety of the best grasses, with the 
liberty of ranging over some three or four 
fields of about 50 acres, at all seasons. I 
use no hay in winter, fodder with plenty of 
corn in it, is Madam’s principal diet during 
the winter season. 
If the above facts are worth a place in 
your excellent paper, you are at liberty to 
publish them. J. W. Brock. 
AN AMERICAN HERD-BOOK. 
As evidence of the want of another work 
of this kind, (see prospectus in our adver¬ 
tising colums,) we take the following commu¬ 
nication on the subject from the Ohio Far¬ 
mer. The writer is one of the earliest 
Short Horn breeders in the Scioto valley, 
whose opinion is worthy of consideration by 
all interested in the business of breeding 
Short Horns. 
LET US HAVE A SHORT HORN HERD BOOK. 
Editor Ohio Farmer : The inquiry—what 
are Full-blood short Hors 1—answered by 
several correspondents, in a late number of 
the Ohio Farmer, reminds me of the neces¬ 
sity of having a record of our Short Horns. 
I have long hoped to see some movement by 
breeders, or the interested public, to effect 
this desirable end : that is, to record in an 
American work, all of the best pure bred 
Short Horus, imported to, or bred in Amer¬ 
ica. 
This fine race of cattle is doubtless des¬ 
tined to keep the ascendancy over all other 
breeds in this country, except, perhaps, in 
some of the more Northern parts, and also 
some of the poorest dairy districts. I mean 
to say that the Short Horns are now, and 
will continue to be, the main foundation on 
which we must improve the native stock of 
the country, and that they will be, continual¬ 
ly resorted to to cross upon, because experi¬ 
ence has fully proved that to cross grades 
upon grades, has never answered the expec¬ 
tations of those that have tried it, and that to 
us the pure blood male is the shortest way, 
and only sure foundation on which to build 
in order to insure a steady, and permanent 
improvement in the stock. 
Now, assuming these to be facts, and 
which no one, I think will doubt, not many 
generations of cattle will pass, until it will be a 
troublesome and difficult matter to trace ped¬ 
igrees correctly, because they are unre¬ 
corded in some instances. For I know cer¬ 
tainly some breeders are, or have been, care¬ 
less in keeping a regular and correct record 
of their own cattle, and time and the in¬ 
creased numbers of the cattle, must make 
Ihe pedigrees altogether unreliable, unless a 
printed record is made of them ; and if not, 
then not long in the future, purchasers, hav¬ 
ing lost confidence in the correctness of the 
the pedigrees shown them by the salesman, 
they will judge the value of the animals alto¬ 
gether upon their merits shown by the eye 
In coming at their worth, will they then fol¬ 
low the directions of managers at our State 
Fairs, and at Springfield to the awarding 
committees, to “ Judge the best pure blooa 
Short Horns, without seemg their pedigrees, 
or knowing that they have any." The best 
judges could often go amiss in the value of a 
Short Horn without the aid of a pedigree. 
Will the advocates of good blood (and 
where is there an experienced breeder that 
is not) submit to do awa^ with pedigrees, 
and enter the field with grades, or full 
bloods 1 If there is no difference in useful¬ 
ness, or value, between such and the pure 
breds but what is apparent to the eye, then 
it would be right to discard pedigrees alto¬ 
gether. But the difference is world-wide. 
Take one illustration : 
A grade, high grade, or full blood, as you 
please, may be found in point of form, and 
other desirable qualities, a very good animal, 
but has but three or four crosses of im¬ 
proved Short Horn blood. This animal may 
compare favorably in all points with another, 
say a medium pure bred Short Horn, that 
has an undoubted good pedigree, tracing 
back to the first, and best improvers of their 
race. Now these animals of so near an 
equality to the eye, on being examined by 
an experienced breeder, the one with pure 
pedigree would be adjudged to be worth 
three times that of the other. Why the dif¬ 
ference 1 Because of the chances of the pro¬ 
duce of the pure bred would be at least equal 
to its dam, and very like to be much better 
by a good pure bred sire. And the chances 
of the other would be against its ever produc¬ 
ing an equal to its dam, and the possibility of 
its breeding back to its unimproved inferior an¬ 
cestors. 
We see in this case that there was a very 
great improvement upon the old unimproved 
stock, on the dam’s side, for three or four 
crosses, until it was equal to a medium 
thoroughbred, and fortunately for the owner, 
each succeeding cross partook more of re¬ 
semblance to the pure blood sire, than of the 
dam, and inherited, it may be, more of his 
pure blood. But the next produce of the 
last cross might partake of color, and in some 
measure, a resemblance to some ancestor in 
the line of the old unimproved stock on the 
side of the dam. In short there would be 
no certainty of a continued improvement of 
the produce, when one parent had but a few 
crosses of the improved race ; hence the value 
of good pedigree, and the importance of record¬ 
ing the best cattle. 
To continue to record our cattle in the 
English Herd Book, as a few have done, is 
worse than useless. It is expensive, and of 
no benefit to any one in the West. For no 
one here would purchase the thirteen or 
fourteen volumes of it at the price of seventy 
dollars, especially when it is known that no 
reliance can be placed in several of the last 
volumes. 
English breeders have registered their 
Short Horqs for nearly eighty years, and if 
259 
they can yet continue their record to their 
advantage, after so large a portion of their 
cattle are improved Short Horns, or closely 
allied to them, (exclusive of the several other 
distinct breeds,) how muchmore then, would 
it be to our interest, who have but just com¬ 
menced improving, to register ours, so few 
in number, in comparison with theirs. We 
have five thousand natives and cross breds to 
one of the thorough or improved race ; but 
a spirit of improvement is now more gener 
ally aroused in our people, in almost every 
quarter, and they would no doubt second a 
proposal to publish a Short Horn Herd Book. 
The American Herd Book contains but a 
very small minority of the Short Horns at 
this day. The author, L. F. Allen, if I am 
not mistaken, intimated not very long since, 
in a communication to the Country Gentle¬ 
man, that he would not continue the work . 
I believe he received neither solid renumera¬ 
tion, nor thanks sufficient to pay him for the 
good work he did. 
Not knowing a shorter or better way to 
get the opinion of others interested in this 
matter than through the press, I throw out 
these remarks through the Ohio Farmer for 
that purpose. Harness Renick. 
Derbyville, Pickaway Co., Oiiio. 
ARE TURNIPS AND RUTA BAGAS GOOD FOE 
ANY THING ? 
This is a strange question to ask at so late 
a period of the world as this, and yet we of¬ 
ten hear farmers—pretty good practical farm¬ 
ers, too—make the remark that they do not 
consider turnips worth raising, and of course 
they do not raise them. They say, give us 
Indian corn and clover enough, and you may 
have the turnips. This is no reasoning at 
all. That Indian corn and clover hay are 
among the best kinds of food for farm stock, 
nobody denies ; but it does not prove that, 
because these are the best, turnips are good 
for nothing. We have always considered 
them very valuable, and richly repaying the 
cost of raising. 
A few Aveeks ago, we published a commu¬ 
nication from J. W. Proctor, Esq., of Mass., 
detailing the experiments of S. Sprague, 
Esq., of Duxbury, Mass., in feeding out tur¬ 
nips with salt hay with profit. We have 
fed them to sheep and cattle of our own in 
connection with the poor and almost unpala¬ 
table hay from our bogs, (bog hay,) with good 
advantage. They should be fed liberally— 
a quart or two of flat turnips to a cow or an 
ox is not enough. 
We once had a lot of flat turnips frozen 
very hard during the winter, under a cover¬ 
ing of straw. We supposed they were lost. 
In the spring, when thawed to a mush, one 
day we discovered that the sheep.had found 
them, and Avere eating them Avith a good rel¬ 
ish. Fearing that it might injure the sheep 
if they ate their fill, we took them ayvay and 
fed them out tAvice a day. They continued 
to eat them readily, and to thrive upon them 
in conjunction Avith the hay given them. 
We do not know by any experiments what 
particular effect this freezing and thawing- 
had upon the nutritive properties of the tur¬ 
nips—Ave only mention this fact to show that 
the sheep liked them even in that state, 
cooked as they were by the frost. 
The September number of the Albany 
Cultivator has the following communication 
from a correspondent, Avhich sIioavs the com¬ 
parative results of his experiments on the 
use of turnips and Indian meal, Avhich Ave 
copy for the perusal of some of our anti-tur¬ 
nip friends : 
“Havingoccasion, a few years since, to 
feed a pair of large oxen, and having a lot of 
ruta bagas on hand, I tried the following ex¬ 
periment. I commenced in December, when 
the oxen Aveighed 3,800 lbs. I fed them one 
