107-12 
September 27, 
CATTLE AT THE STATE FAIR. 
The cattle exhibit at the State Fail* 
seemed to me to be good. There is one 
thing at the State Fair no less than at 
other fairs respecting cattle that one 
wishes might be improved. It is diffi¬ 
cult for a visitor unacquainted to get 
very much definite instruction out of the 
cattle exhibit. Instruction ought to be 
a prominent feature of all fairs; more¬ 
over it ought to be readily obtained. Ex¬ 
hibitors are present primarily for the 
premiums and for advertising the sale 
of their cattle. That is legitimate, and 
the condition is necessary. Naturally 
these exhibitors wish to see other breeders 
and prospective buyers. The man who is 
already well up in some line of breeding 
can find about what he will most care 
for. lie will study his particular line. 
I confess that I had to do a good bit of 
work nearly all of one afternoon to get 
a few points on the different breeds. The 
breeders and the officials were courteous 
and obliging, but it seems to me that 
some system of imparting general infor¬ 
mation ought to be devised, to the end of 
informing the common farmer as to the 
advantages of better breeding, and as to 
the manner of proceeding. 
In my inquiries I started in with the 
Jerseys. They did not seem to be well 
advertised. One cow had a record of 389 
pounds of butter as a two-year-old. For 
the most part the cattle looked nice, and 
there were exhibits from the Eastern and 
Middle States to a considerable degree. 
The Guernseys came next; these were a 
little more accessible. Old Dolly Dimple 
was pictured and her record stated 
707.36 pounds of butter at two years, 
and 906.89 pounds at 3% years. King 
Masher 5th was there, and the record of 
an ancestor on one side of 525 pounds of 
fat, and the other side of 745 pounds. A 
recently imported cow, supposed to be 
the best on the Island, occupied a stall, 
and her production of 1.568 pounds of 
4.2 per cent milk for last May was given. 
The Holsteins were in largest numbers, 
as one would expect, since the territory 
about Syracuse is peculiarly Holstein 
territory. Some literature respecting 
this breed was given out and I think that 
it might have been possible to secure 
some information from one of the out¬ 
side tents respecting this breed had they 
been discovered in time. As it was I 
got my most interesting material from 
a man who was in attendance from Iowa, 
lie is a farmer and keeps grade Hol- 
steins. lie bought the best he could get 
a few years ago and has been breeding 
up. These cows cost him about $65 each 
at that time, but by careful development 
and good breeding he has cows that he 
could not afford to sell for less than $200. 
He is a member of an Iowa test asso¬ 
ciation, which costs him $1.50 per cow 
a year. One of his cows gave him, ac¬ 
cording to the figures of the tester, $150 
over the cost of her feed last year. He 
gets an average of 35 cents a pound for 
fat, however, which is rather more than 
we average, and his feeds are not quite 
so high as ours. There is not so great 
di (Terence though. For example, he sold 
clear Timothy hay last year at $15 a ton 
and bought Alfalfa at the same price. 
Corn is cheaper there, and I think cot¬ 
ton seed also. This man by development 
changed the cost of producing fat 18 
cents a pound to less than 10 cents. This 
was a Holstein man, but not a profes¬ 
sional breeder. He was getting infor¬ 
mation as well as giving it. 
Ayrshires there were of fine breeding, 
and it seemed to me that the breeders of 
this line of dairy animals were taking 
rather more real pride in their exhibits 
than any of the others. They had high- 
priced animals, however, that for the 
most part seemed to be out of the reach 
of the usual farmer. They make great 
claims for this breed for market milk 
and particularly so for infant feeding, 
claiming a better proportion of the vari¬ 
ous milk solids than is produced by any 
other breed. There was a grand cham¬ 
pion bull priced at $2,400. and a cow 
that as a three-year-old produced 15.000 
pounds of four-per-cent milk. Several of 
the animals shown were imported from 
Scotland this year. Four cows sold for 
$10,000. One man is producing a special 
brand of certified Ayrshire milk espe¬ 
cially for babies for which he gets 25 
cents a quart. Bacterial counts go as 
low as 450 per cubic centimeter. I saw 
some fine looking Brown Swiss cattle, but 
found no man to tell their story. 
The proportion of beef breeds seemed to 
me to be especially large for the greatest 
dairy State in the Union. These ani¬ 
mals seemed to attract fully as much at¬ 
tention as any, but I assume it was from 
the standpoint of curiosity rather than 
utility to the spectators. The two 
breeds about which I was able to get 
most complete information were the 
Herefords and the Short-horns. The 
former were represented by selections 
from a thoroughly high-priced herd. The 
story goes that the bull heading this herd 
cost $35,000. I am not in a position to 
dispute the story. The Herefords are 
claimed to dress the highest per cent of 
any of the breeds. Some have been 
claimed at 68 per cent, and an average 
for good specimens is said to be 65 per 
cent. These are the cattle most in de¬ 
mand in the real West and Southwest, 
I was told. They are good to hustle 
for themselves. In Ohio and Western 
New York the Short-horns are usually 
pivf erred. 
The Short-horn breeders have their 
claims for all that. Most of them that 
I saw took a look at New York conditions 
THE RURAL 
and recommended what they call milking 
Short-horns. Some claimed a production 
of milk of 8,000 pounds a year, but I 
think this was finally dropped to 6,000 
pounds. Then they argue that the 
“beefy” heifers and the bulls should go 
to beef. The time of disposing of them 
depends upon circumstances, but it was 
conservatively estimated at two years, 
and a weight of 1,200 pounds alive. I 
have heard breeders claim that this breed 
could produce 1,200-pound steers at 12 
months, but that must be the exception. 
For the New York farmer who wants to 
go into the beef business, it seems to me 
that this breed will be a good one to in¬ 
vestigate. So far as our community is 
concerned, I cannot see how a farmer is 
going to improve his conditions much by 
changing from dairying to beef produc¬ 
tion. H. n. L. 
How Many Cows to the Milker ? 
I have only a small dairy (at present 
seven cows). These I milk myself, and 
think I could milk 12 cows twice a day 
and do a fair day’s work on farm be¬ 
sides. However, I have made some in¬ 
quiries, and find the amount of milking 
the average milker does varies consider¬ 
ably, depending a good • deal upon what 
his' day’s work consists of outside of the 
milking. The superintendent of the larg¬ 
est dairy in this section tells me his 
men milk from 10 to 18 cows per day, 
and work on the farm through the day. 
The average is about 12 cows per man, 
but a man who will milk 10 cows a day 
the year around he considei's doing well. 
The best record he knew of was a man 
who milked 14 cows in one hour, washing 
his hands after milking each cow, weigh¬ 
ing milk and setting down weight of 
same, and tuiming milk into strainer. 
The cows were heavy milkers, averaging 
about 36 pounds per day each. This rec¬ 
ord was kept up for several weeks, but a 
man could not continue it for any length 
of time. A milker from a dairy near 
Portland, Me., tells me he is expected to 
milk 15 cows per day, but his additional 
work is mostly around the barn. 
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