i89o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
831 
THE JERSEY COW. 
SHE MAKES A GOOD FAMILY MEMBER. 
ECONOMICAL, INDUSTRIOUS, ENTERPRISING. 
The Most Economical Butter Maker. 
We think the Jersey cow is specially valuable for the 
family and dairyman on account of the richness of her 
milk. She will make more butter in proportion to the 
food consumed than an animal belonging to any other 
breed. In other words, she will make a pound of butter 
at less cost than any other cow. Economy in manufacture 
is always of first importance no less in the dairy than in 
the manufacturing establishment. There are many other 
reasons why we consider the Jersey the dairy and family 
cow, but the above are among the strongest. 
How to Select a Bull.— If a long line of ancestors have 
failed to make butter, it is reasonable to suppose that 
the same condition will continue. “ Like produces like,” 
and while there are exceptions, the rule holds good, con¬ 
sequently one should see that on both the sire’s and dam’s 
side the females have been butter producers. Look to the 
pedigree. Again, if the ancestors are right then look for 
individual merit. A rich, yellow hide, long body, level 
back, short legs, good head and bright eyes are all to be 
sought. Other points may also be considered with ad¬ 
vantage. Be sure that the animal is of the type of blood 
he represents. A young bull of the Stoke Pogis blood 
should have a Stoke Pogis head; failing in this (which in 
this strain is a distinctive feature), we would pass him 
by, fearing that he would fail in other im¬ 
portant points also. Nearly every strain 
has its distinctive characteristics, which 
should be insisted upon if that strain is 
wanted. Never forget that “the bull is one- 
half the herd” and that the best is always 
the cheapest, as every reproduction adds 
either good or poor animals to the herd, 
and it costs no moie to raise or feed a good 
than a poor animal. Strain a point there¬ 
fore and buy the best bull you can pay 
for. He should be good for at least ten 
years’ service, and in that time $100 or 
$200 in the first cost are of small account 
compared with the quality of the calves 
secured. ayer & mckinney. 
Delaware Co., N. Y. 
Jerseys Demand Comparison. 
The best reasons I can give why the Jersey 
cow is valuable for every-day purposes are: 
first, that one gets greater returns for the 
same outlay from a Jersey than from an 
animal of any other breed. The only way for 
a non-believer in Jerseys to satisfy himself 
of their merits is to put a good Jersey oow 
beside a good representative of any other 
breed and keep an accurate account of the 
feed used, and credit each with its product. 
The chief fault the farmer finds with the 
Jersey is her size. I showed three Jerseys 
at Rochester, N. Y., four, five and seven 
years old respectively, which will, I believe, 
weigh together 3,500 pounds. They are not 
so large as Short horns or Holstein-Fries- 
ians; but the cost of maintaining the car¬ 
cass of the Short-horn or Holstein each 
year would be equal to the difference in the 
prices received for the respective carcasses 
for beef when the animals are unfit for the 
dairy. Again, the Jersey has been so 
educated that she gives milk more days in 
the year than a cow belonging to any other 
breed. In fact, many good ones do not go 
dry at all. For family use cream is gener¬ 
ally an article not easily obtained; but a 
good Jersey will give a large family all the 
cream they need, and the remaining milk, if 
set in a creamer, is sweet and wholesome. 
Bulls should be selected for constitution, 
general and individual excellence, pedigree and disposition. 
Boston, Mass. geo. l. w. 
Economical, Beautiful and Salable. 
I prefer Jerseys to cows of any other breed because in the 
first place, I can keep them for less, as they do not consume 
so much food as larger animals; and, then, their milk being 
richer, I get a better return for the outlay. I consider that 
every dairyman or milk seller would greatly improve the 
quality of his milk,'raise its standard and better please his 
customers by keeping, say, two or three Jerseys to every 
herd of 20. For private use they are superior to any, owing 
to the richness of their milk, to say nothing of their fawn¬ 
like and graceful appearance giving tone to every lawn and 
paddock they occupy, so that they can be much more 
readily sold to the wealthier classes who study appearances 
combined with economy to the fullest extent. The old 
story that the Jersey is wanting when sold to the butcher 
has been urged by breeders of larger cattle, but it should 
be remembered that much more food is consumed by their 
favorites than by the Jersey. In my opinion the difference 
in weight is more than counterbalanced by the expense in¬ 
volved in putting it on. Why go to the expense of feed¬ 
ing a large carcass through life to have a few more pounds 
of flesh after death ? 
In selecting a bull the following points should be ob¬ 
served: Head small and broad between the eyes; throat 
clean and not too heavy at the shoulders; back level and 
broad across the loin; barrel long and deep at the flank; 
legs short and hips wide; tail fine, yellow at the end with 
a good switch; hide thin and fine. WM. G. ROWEEL, 
Monroe County, N. Y. 
Our Jersey. 
The cow pictured at Fig. 397, is a member of The R. N.-Y. 
family, and a very importafit member too. We like to ar¬ 
range it so that each member will have a special duty to 
perform. Flossie’s share of this household work is to pro¬ 
vide milk, cream and butter. This suits her, as she says 
in substance: “You provide the food, I’ll do the rest.” 
Flossie is a Jersey seven years old. She is eligible to reg¬ 
istry, but we have never had her registered. As she was 
intended for a family cow we cared less for her breeding 
value than for her intrinsic merit. We did not care to 
pay for her “papers,” consequently we do not know her 
exact “line of breeding.” If she can keep the milk and 
cream pitchers filled month after month and year after 
year, we are satisfied without an examination of her fam¬ 
ily history. If we were breeding dairy cows, however, 
we would want this pedigree, for to duplicate the cow one 
must duplicate the pedigree. 
Flossie has been giving milk now steadily for 22 months 
and is still farrow. She gives at present about six quarts 
per day on light feed. We can easily increase it to eight 
or nine by extra feeding. She gave 16 quarts per day 
when fresh. As it is, we have all the milk we can use, and 
cream without limit. We use a great deal of our butter 
unchurned, that is, we use it in the form of cream on oat¬ 
meal, in biscuits, on potatoes—wherever it can be made 
palatable. The amount of actual butter used is very 
small. This wholesale use of cream might frighten some 
dairymen, but it pays us, the food tastes better and is 
more digestible. 
stalks chopped into a barrel, with boiling water added, and 
the top covered with a board, will make excellent cow 
feed. It pays to cut and chop stalks and hay and to steam 
them where they must all be bought. Those who keep 
family cows, as a rule are forced to buy most of their 
coarse forage. A hay cutter will pay them well. A good 
Jersey makes the best “family cow” for several good rea¬ 
sons. She is intelligent and affectionate; she will extract 
more of the fat from common fodder than any other milk¬ 
ing animal; she will milk longer and make the best farrow 
cow; she is thrifty, gentle, hardy and small. 
OUR JERSEY COW. Drawn From Nature. Fig. 397 
Our Jersey is a high-strung, nervous animal—we never 
saw a first class butter cow that was not. She is as intel¬ 
ligent as a well-bred horse. In the pasture she will never 
permit a stranger to come near her, yet she will come trot¬ 
ting up to the writer at a single call or whistle. In the 
darkest night, even; she will come to him at once after 
others have tried for a long time to catch her. She is af¬ 
fectionate too. While being milked she will frequently 
stretch her nose around and rub it lovingly against my 
shoulder. We have seen so called men thus treated get up 
and kick the cow that showed affection for them. There 
is no sense in owning a high-spirited cow unless you can 
get into her good graces and win her affection. Unless 
you can do so you will keep her at a loss. 
Flossie will eat anything that is connected with human 
vegetable food. She prefers clover hay and sweet corn 
stalks, with bran, oil meal and corn meal. Cotton seed 
meal she does not much care for. We have recently been 
told of cows that average eight pounds of cotton-seed meal 
per day. We have no grounds for disputing this state¬ 
ment, but we know that such a ration would kill Flossie 
or ruin her as a milker. There is more in the cow than in 
the feed. At first Flossie did not like oil meal, but now 
she is not satisfied unless a handful of it is put in with her 
other food. Oil meal proves, with us, the most economical 
grain we can buy. We feed it mixed with bran or scat¬ 
tered over turnips. Some wise “ authorities” tell us that 
Timothy hay will make bitter milk. It is nonsense. We 
have fed Timothy hay alone for the past six weeks and never 
had better milk. It is not the cheapest hay for the dairy¬ 
man, but it gives milk of good qualicy. We feed cabbage 
and turnips at milking time Iwith no ill effects. Corn 
PALATABLE FOOD FOR COWS. 
Make Cow Food “Taste Good.” 
WALDO F. BROWN. 
In feeding stock of all kinds the farmer who takes pains 
to make the food palatable will usually have the best 
success. This Is one thing that gives value to skim-milk 
and potatoes cooked and mashed for pigs; for with a few 
gallons of either, a barrel of swill can be flavored, and this 
is the principal reason why it pays to chaff straw fodder 
and poor hay, because by so doing we can mix ground 
food, and a little salt with them, and make them more 
palatable, and I believe also more digestible. As a rule, I 
have found that all the cows of a herd may be fed alike, 
although there is occasionally one with a delicate appetite 
that will require some special care. It is always unprofit¬ 
able to have a cow off her feed, for she shrinks in her milk, 
and the oftener she is troubled in this way the more pre¬ 
disposed to it she becomes. I have had more trouble from 
loss of appetite from feeding corn meal than 
any other food, and it has been worse 
when the corn was shelled than when 
ground cob and all. I find mixing food 
makes it more palatable and less liable to 
produce Indigestion than when one kind 
alone is fed, and both for economy’s sake, 
and the good effects on the system, I have 
for several years past fed my cows with 
corn meal ground fine, cob and all, mixed 
with an equal bulk of roller-process, coarse 
wheat bran. I am quite sure that the cob 
(if ground fine) has a favorable effect on 
digestion. I am inclined to believe that the 
addition of one pound of old-process oil 
meal to each ten of this mixture would be 
profitable. 
I am quite sure that salt plays a more 
important part in animal digestion than 
most farmers are aware of, and with the 
mixture of food recommended above and 
regularity in salting I would expect to feed 
a herd of cows all winter, giving them all 
the same variety of food, without one get¬ 
ting “off her feed.” I believe the best way 
to feed salt is to give a little every day, or 
to keep large lumps of rock salt where the 
cattle can have access to it. I met a wide¬ 
awake dairyman in Wisconsin, whose ex¬ 
perience had made him a thorough convert 
to the use of salt. He had read in a prom¬ 
inent agricultural paper that it was a kind 
of superstition to give cows salt, and when 
his supply ran out in the early summer he 
did not renew it. The season proved dry 
and his cows did poorly, were frequently 
off their feed, and sometimes would not 
give down their milk and when the fall 
rains started the pasture, they still did not 
do well. He bought mill feed, and began 
liberal feeding, but could not get his sales 
of milk above $2.50 a day. Finally he 
thought of the salt and bought a barrel and 
began feeding regularly a small quantity 
each day, and in 10 days his milk sales 
were over $4 per day and all the trouble 
had disappeared. 
There is no question in my mind that it 
will pay to cut a moderate quantity of hay 
or good bright straw and mix the ground 
feed with it and if it can be wet one feed ahead and 
allowed to soften a few hours, all the better. This 
mixing of the ground feed with cut hay or straw, it is 
claimed, insures that it should be raised and remasticated 
in chewing the cud ; but whether this is so or not, it is 
better digested and assimilated. An experiment of the 
London Omnibus Company showed that there was a sav¬ 
ing of 10 cents per head per day by grinding the grain and 
cutting the hay; but that was with feed selling at higher 
prices than we must usually pay here. I find one feed of 
roots a day—beets I think are best and most easily grown— 
has an excellent effect on the appetite and digestion, and 
it will pay well to grow them to be fed in this condimental^ 
way. As aids to digestion and stimulants to appetite 
they are of much more value than their analyses would 
indicate. 
The cows should be fed at regular hours and a regular 
quantity. I think much of the trouble with cows getting 
off their feed, comes from careless feeding. The feeder, 
instead of measuring out a ration to each animal, goes be¬ 
fore them with a bushel basket full, and pours out a 
quantity to each and some get too much and others too 
little. With good, sound, ground corn and wheat bran I 
can and often have fed a herd of cows all winter without 
one of them losing a feed. 
Butler County, Ohio. 
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in any part of the United States, Canada or 
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