lf'09. 
THE RERAL NEW -VOREER 
81 e 
THE FARMERS IMPROVED COW. 
Breeding up a Herd. 
You ask me to give yon some account 
of the heifer calves which were shown 
on page 655. They are all but one 
daughters of Owl’s Model Fox 76617, 
a grandson of the Owl and of Oxford 
Lad. They embody the result of 10 
years of work at Esperanza, in which 
the problem of raising a commonplace 
herd to a high degree of excellence by 
the use of registered bulls has been 
worked out. In all, we have had four 
bulls, not counting one whose service 
made no effect on the herd because we 
keep none of his daughters. The first 
was a Connecticut product, Coomassie, 
Eurotus, Perrot, etc. The bull that 
followed was Welcome on one side and 
, more or less Eurotus on the other. W T e 
had several cows that carried more or 
less Eurotus blood, and he w r as very 
successful in breeding to this. The third 
was pure Island, and almost, but not 
quite, an out-cross from his predeces¬ 
sors, while Owl’s Model Fox unites all 
the best Island blood lines of the other 
three. I might have bred and out- 
crossed ineffectually for years had there 
been no connecting links between the 
successive sires that have formed my 
herd; but as there was always a com¬ 
mon blood line I have gradually ap¬ 
proached the type I most prefer, while 
augmenting capacity for both milk and 
butter. 
I was so fortunate as to receive a let¬ 
ter from Mr. Geo. Peer, breeder of the 
Melia Ann herd, early in my operations, 
which gave me the key to the secret of 
orderly development by the use of dif¬ 
ferent sires. He merely meant to warn 
against cross-breeding the different Jer¬ 
sey families, but I thought I saw the 
reason, and time has proved the cor¬ 
rectness of my theory. There are, how¬ 
ever, certain advantages to be derived 
from cross-breeding Island and Ameri¬ 
can blood, chiefly those of increased vi¬ 
tality, vigor and constitution, and the 
greater size accompanying. The blood 
of Eurotus seems free from the usual 
disadvantages of crossing American and 
Island lines, especially when the Island 
family is strongly Welcome. (Mr. Dar¬ 
ling did well with Hamley.) Exile of 
St. Lambert is, on the contrary, antag¬ 
onistic ; the ugly horns, rump and high 
hind legs are almost sure to reappear 
without great gain in milk production. 
1 have struggled with Exile and other 
American families, and after the third 
generation produced from Island sires 
large, thrifty, handsome, profitable ani¬ 
mals with excellent constitution. But 
1 believe 1 could have attained the same 
result more easily without the out-cross, 
by careful feeding and a large pasture. 
Ten years ago the Esperanza herd 
freshened with 10 to 12 quarts a day, 
mature cows, and began to fail after 
six months’ lactation. We thought a 
36-quart cow was a wonder in those 
days. Now the heifers, at two years 
of age. freshen with 10, 11 and some¬ 
times 15 quarts of milk; the average to 
each cow is over 6,000 pounds a lacta¬ 
tion, and often exceeds 7,000. and I 
have the satisfaction of knowing that 
the calves of each new season are bet¬ 
ter than those of the year before. 
In the picture on page 655 is a calf 
whose dam cost me $250; while her 
grandam brought at auction over $500, 
and her great-grandam on the sire’s 
side. Golden Beatrice, now the property 
«»f Biltmore, $1,400. Such are the golden 
distinctions wrought by judicious ad¬ 
vertising. 1 am expecting very much 
of this well-bred lady; but I call atten¬ 
tion to her because in the same cut is 
another heifer, daughter of a grade 
row, that some day if I am lucky will 
bring me in $50. Neither you nor any- 
"ne else can pick out the high-bred lady 
from the plebeian grade; not in the pic¬ 
ture nor in the calf lot where they 
browse together. I am quite sure the 
plebeian calf will be a good cow, because 
her dam and grandam have been; I 
have kept the record of their perform¬ 
ance as far as possible, and I know the 
performance of her sire’s dams a long 
wav back. I am much surer of her than 
1 am of the high-bred lady. 
It is entirely possible for the hard¬ 
working farmer to fill his barn with 
‘'Ws as good as this heifer will be, and 
1 reed them himself. Mousy, the dam 
< t my grade, is a long, handsome cow, 
the daughter of Jersey Beau 4, a Wel¬ 
come bull belonging to a family of cele¬ 
brated milk producers on the Island. 
He gave me several daughters, all good; 
but Mousy, who is presumed to be more 
or less Eurotus, is one of the best. I 
have her record before me. She gave 
in the 30 days of November, 1,120 
pounds of milk; enough to have put her 
in the A. J. C. C. Register of Merit had 
she not been a grade. Her dam came 
from my neighbor’s not long since. I 
knew she must be Mousy’s dam, as she 
proved to be, because she had her es¬ 
cutcheon, a hereditary mark largely con¬ 
trolled by the Jersey dam. Buttercup 
is like Mousy, but shorter, coarser, and 
with a poorer fore-udder. She is a 
very heavy milker in Summer, and dry 
in Winter, that being my neighbor’s 
wasteful programme. Mousy milks 10 
months,, and then we have trouble in 
drying her for calving. She is now 
making her seventh thousand pounds of 
milk, and may go beyond this. In short, 
she shows just the improvement that 
the second registered sire makes on the 
offspring of his predecessor; for in 
grading up a herd nothing comes by 
chance. The first sire improves his 
daughter; the second goes further; the 
third advances still more and the fourth 
completes the work as far as trans¬ 
forming a scrub into what is practically 
purebred goes. After him the scrub is 
out of sight. 
Registered Jersey bulls are not too 
expensive for any farmer to own if he 
will purchase them as calves; bulls with 
excellent dams, and beautifully built. He 
can by their use transform his herd in 
a few years. I have been breeding up 
my present herd for 10 years; but I bred 
Mousy and several others, her equals, 
some time ago. I do not mean that 
the Esperanza herd is a grade herd; 
it is not. But I began just where any 
farmer with very little capital must— 
with what I had; and, keeping and im¬ 
proving my grades, gradually built up 
my herd, most of the cows registered, 
but some of them grades too valuable 
to weed out. 
The point I wish to make is that 
anybody can own a herd of beautiful 
cows, excellent milkers, beginning just 
where he is with his present herd, if he 
will put his heart into the art of breed¬ 
ing and developing his yearly income of 
heifer calves. It is not worth while to 
try to improve a herd merely by selec¬ 
tion. Life is too short to waste years 
in getting results that a purebr-ed sire 
can give in months. Observe, the first 
set of heifers will be 50 per cent good, 
like the sire’s dam. The second set 
have 50 per cent, of the second sire, and 
the chance of nicking into the blood of 
the first. This is likely if the breeder 
chooses a sire related to the first, but 
with other good blood to add as well. 
The art of breeding largely consists in 
selecting a good sire, Pedros St. Lam¬ 
bert, Signal, or Golden Lad, and then 
in choosing his successor, being sure that 
there are connecting lines of blood to 
breed to. You thus obtain a skein of 
threads that can be woven together, 
whereas if the farmer buys at haphazard 
now a St. Lambert, now a Golden Lad, 
he has a handful of links belonging to 
a broken chain. The development of 
his herd is not sure or orderly, and he 
has no type in mind to create. The legs, 
tails, horns, rumps will not be symmetri¬ 
cal. 
There are a great many herds whose 
breeders never bought but one regis¬ 
tered cow.; the herd having been devel¬ 
oped by the use of well-chosen sires on 
dam, daughters and granddaughters. 
Such herds are very homogenous; but 
two dams are better. Perhaps the hard¬ 
est thing the farmer who wishes to 
improve his herd has to do is to fix in 
his mind the image of the animal he is 
about to try to breed. Here is where 
the fair comes in. There is no educa¬ 
tion equal to that of the fair with its 
strings of superb cattle. If in addition 
there be a prize for the best milking- 
grade, and the expert judge to point 
him the way to go, or, more properly, 
to show him what to look for and 
value, he is set far on his road almost 
at the first. There is, finally, the ques¬ 
tion of what to reject and what to keep. 
Distrust the animal with a back as round 
as a locomotive boiler. ‘‘Well-sprung 
ribs” and ‘‘heart girth” are good words 
to conjure with; but the angular cow, 
springing out widely behind her fore¬ 
legs, so as to make a wide back at the 
hips, with a razok spine and sharp with¬ 
ers is the cow to turn your high-priced 
feed into milk. She is the cow with 
nerve and energy, and if she has al¬ 
ways been well fed you cannot possibly 
fatten her while trying to bring her to 
her greatest flow of milk. The angular 
cow that demands a broad ration is the 
dairyman’s cow—in these days. 
FANNY MORRIS SMITH. 
Litchfield Co., Conn. 
50 CENT 
BUTTER 
BEFORE CHRISTMAS 
AND WHAT IT MEANS 
“50 CENT BUTTER BEFORE CHRIST¬ 
MAS”—is the prediction freely made by the 
big leaders in butter production, based upon 
their close knowledge of trade conditions. 
Butter at anywhere near such a price means 
that a De Laval Cream Separator WILL PAY 
FOR ITSELF BEFORE THE END OF 
THE YEAR in its savings over any gravity 
or setting system. 
It means that a De Laval Cream Separator 
WILL PAY FOR ITSELF BY SPRING 
over any competing make of separator in use 
or on the market. 
It means that an Improved De Laval Cream 
Separator WILL PAY FOR ITSELF 
WITHIN A YEAR over the older style 
De Laval Cream Separators in use. 
It means that no one separating cream from 
the milk of even a single cow CAN AFFORD 
to continue to do so a day longer than can be 
helped without an Improved De Laval Cream 
Separator. 
And buyers should remember that a De Laval 
Cream Separator—on which there is just one 
reasonable price for everybody—can be bought at a 
fair discount for cash down or on such liberal time 
that it WILL PAY FOR ITSELF out of its own 
savings. 
That means that NO ONE need go a day longer 
without a De Laval Cream Separator than may‘be 
necessary to order and receive it, and that they 
CANNOT AFFORD to do so. 
It emphasizes the urgent importance of seeing 
the local De Laval agent or communicating with 
the Company directly AT ONCE, with a material 
dollars-and-cents loss EACH DAY of delay in 
doing so. 
Then WHY delay another day? 
THE DE LAVAL SEPARATOR GO 
•42 K. Maimson street 
CHICAGO 
1213 k 1215 Fii.ukrt St. 
PHILADELPHIA 
llltCMM Si b.U UAMI-.VIO STS. 
SAN FRANCISCO 
General Offices: 
165 BROADWAY, 
NEW YORK. 
173-177 William Street 
MONTREAL 
14 & 16 Princess Street 
WINNIPEG 
1016 Western Avenue 
SEATTLE 
