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Voi.. LXVIII No. 3076. 
NEW YORK. JANUARY 9, 1909. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR. 
GRADING UP A HERD OF COWS. 
Practical Experience in Canada. 
In the Fall of 1893 the farm that we 
are now running came into our posses¬ 
sion. With it was a small herd of cattle, 
seven cows and three or four head of 
young stock. Three of the cows were 
brindled in color, ring-streaked, speckled 
and spotted like Jacob’s cattle of old. 
One was a “mulley,” chiefly red but also 
slightly brindled. Two were poor speci¬ 
mens of Short-horn grades, and the last 
was a small black cow of the French 
Canadian type, with probably a good 
deal of the blood of that hardy breed 
in her make-up. The first four and the 
last, in spite of their breeding, or I 
should say lack of breeding—for they 
were simply cows in the sense that a 
mongrel cur is just dog—were of the 
true dairy type and very fair milkers. 
One of the Short-horn grades belonged 
to no special class or type, but was per¬ 
haps more beefy than anything else; at 
any rate she gave little milk and was 
soon turned into beef. The other Short¬ 
horn grade went by the name of 
“Leatherhead.” She was a poor milker, 
of the standard-bred type, and her intel¬ 
lectual manifestations led us to believe 
that what little gray matter she pos¬ 
sessed was of a leathery texture; hence 
the name. Needless to say she was 
cjuickly disposed of. 
To this herd we added a registered 
Jersey bull, purchased from a neighbor 
for $25, and six good grade cows, Short¬ 
horn and Ayrshire crosses, for which 
we also paid $25 a head. These cows 
were bought in September after milking 
all Summer, and were cheap on that ac¬ 
count. The owner was selling out all 
of his stock, consequently we ran little 
risk of getting culls. The farmer who 
has a few head only to sell is very apt 
to keep the best for himself. Our heifer 
calves from the Jersey bull and this 
foundation herd of 11 cows were all 
raised, and a uniformly finer lot of 
heifers we have never had. Undoubt¬ 
edly the excellence ^vas largely due to 
the sire, -who came from a long line of 
heavy producers, and who proved him¬ 
self capable of transmitting these qual¬ 
ities to his offspring. Unfortunately this 
power is not always certain with pure¬ 
bred bulls, even from heavy producers, 
as my later experience has proved. This 
Jersey bull was of the true dairy type, 
but decidedly masculine and extremely 
vigorous. In fact his superabundant 
vigor led him into “ways that were dark 
and tricks that were vain,” like the 
“heathen Chinee,” for he became in time 
very wicked. Rather than risk our lives 
in his presence any longer we were 
forced to fatten and kill him at five 
years of age. 
Just at this time several large herds 
of Jerseys in our immediate vicinity 
were discovered to be badly diseased 
with tuberculosis. This and other con¬ 
siderations led us to change our plan 
of breeding, so we decided to improve 
our cattle by the use of Holstein bulls, 
GRADE F'RENCH CANADIAN COW, PATTIE. Fig. 8. 
GRADE HOLSTEIN COW, DOLLTE. Fig. 9. 
and to stick to that breed until we pos¬ 
sessed in time a high-grade herd. We 
were not prepared to invest much money 
in the business, so we bought for $10 a 
Holstein-Friesian bull calf, purebred 
but not registered, from a farmer of our 
own county. This was in September, 
and I first saw the bull in a rough hilly 
pasture where he was running with a 
number of other calves—the whole 
bunch having been weaned many weeks 
before from everything except grass. 
His hair was long but he had a thrifty 
and vigorous appearance in spite of 
roughing it, so I paid the man his 
price and took him home, subject to the 
tuberculin test, which he afterwards 
passed satisfactorily. Of course there is 
an extreme of “roughing it,” often fol¬ 
lowed in the rearing of young stock, 
which is nothing short of cruelty; but 
there is also a happy medium course be¬ 
tween that treatment and pampering 
which, I believe, is conducive to vigor 
and stamina, without serious deteriora¬ 
tion in size. For the average farmer’s 
need is not the cow that requires a dol¬ 
lar’s worth of high-class feed to pro¬ 
duce 75 cents worth of milk; the aver¬ 
age farmer needs a cow that can live 
and thrive and produce milk at a profit, 
chiefly on the fodders he is able to raise 
on his farm. I am told that some of 
the large Holstein-Friesian breeders are 
wintering their young stock in open 
sheds. This treatment, when intelli¬ 
gently followed, will certainly have a 
tendency to make hardy cattle. Our $10 
bull proved himself to be a valuable sire. 
His daughters, with one or two excep¬ 
tions, were certainly better than the 
average run oF cows throughout the 
country. They were larger, produced 
more milk, and the composite test of 
their milk at the creamery was above 
the average. 
Our next bull cost us $50 at six 
months of age. He was purchased by 
letter from a distance and was dumped 
on the station platform one cold windy 
day in November. In consequence of this 
exposure a bad cold developed, nearly 
resulting in pneumonia. By good nurs¬ 
ing, however, he pulled through all right 
and grew to be a fine large animal. In 
pedigree, in general apppearance and in 
dairy points he was superior to the $10 
animal; but, strange to say, his calves 
were scarcely better than those from the 
cheaper sire. The first bull invariably 
got black and white calves from cows 
having no Holstein blood whatever, 
whereas the second bull, even when bred 
to half-blood Holstein cows, failed very 
often to transmit his color markings— 
many of his calves being red and white 
instead of black and white. This lack 
of prepotency seemed due altogether tc 
the individuality of the bull. His pedi¬ 
gree traced in many lines to heavy pro¬ 
ducers, and he himself was handsome 
and vigorous yet failed to transmit the 
great producing powers of his female 
ancestors to any marked degree. The 
accompanying cuts, Figs. 8, 9, 10 and 1! 
(the latter on page 34 ), represent 
