996 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
August 7, 1915. 
Live Stock and Dairy 
Breeding and Developing Holsteins. 
[Read by Irving- M. Avery before the Chester 
Co. Holstein Breeders’ Association at Westtown, 
Pa., June 12.] 
Part II. 
But to return to lino brooding-—that 
as you know is the judicious mating of 
animals belonging to the same family or 
families but not closely related—while in¬ 
breeding is the mating of animals directly 
related, such as breeding a sire to his 
own daughters. It has always seemed to 
me that inbreeding, while perhaps a good 
thing when practiced by an expert, is 
practical for only the life of a single in¬ 
dividual. Ultimately its continued and 
indiscriminate practice results in a de¬ 
crease of constitutional vigor, loss of 
prolificacy, lessening of size and weak¬ 
ening of power. A prepotent animal 
may transmit either desirable or unde¬ 
sirable qualities as the ease may be. and 
of course the former result is preferable; 
but unfortunately no guarantee goes with 
the mating, and as a rule the more pre¬ 
potent the sire, the less so the offspring. 
The great factor therefore as may readily 
be seen is proper selection; the object be¬ 
ing to retain in the herd those animals 
inheriting the sire's prepotent qualities, 
in the case of males, and his desirable 
dairy qualities in the case of females. 
The inexperienced breeder had best stick 
to line breeding which is safe, crossing 
out say every third generation to pre¬ 
serve size, stamina, fecundity and trans¬ 
mitting ability, but coming back always 
to the chosen family or combination of 
blood. By a consistent system of line 
breeding, with perhaps occasional in¬ 
stances of judicious and well advised in- 
breeding to intensify and firmly fix some 
particularly desirable quality, faithfully 
adhered to over a period of years, some 
of the greatest herds of the breed have 
been developed. Hit or miss methods of 
breeding including the indiscriminate use 
of any and every sire, provided he is 
merely purebred, a good individual or the 
son of one large record dam, will never 
make for permanent or top-notch success 
in the breeding of cattle. 
If constitution, vitality and ability 
have been bred into a calf, then we have 
an excellent foundation to commence 
upon, and but two things to do in order 
to turn out a successful cow—preserve 
her health and bodily perfection, and de¬ 
velop to the utmost extent her capacity 
for the consumption of feed. Much has 
already been said, but too much stress 
cannot be laid upon the advisability of 
training a young heifer to make use of 
very large quantities of leguminous 
roughage supplemented by a judicious 
amount of good clean silage. In this way 
her capacity for utilizing later large 
amounts of food material is increased to 
the utmost, and she presents to the eye 
a pleasing combination of girth and 
paunch development. Then when she 
reaches maturity she is not likely to be 
finicky in her requirements, but will have 
the ability and the appetite to clean up 
readily anything and everything placed 
before her, including any form of rough- 
age, and on top of that make good use 
of her allowance of grain. That is the 
sort of cow we will like, and the way to 
develop this kind is to train them when 
young to subsist largely upon leguminous 
roughage with a little grain for dessert. 
They may be big and bony and not so 
pleasing to the inexperienced eye. but I 
assure you they make the best cows in 
the end. 
It is our practice to commence feeding 
a small amount of silage at about eight 
or nine months of age, (prior to that 
time calves receive only Alfalfa or clover 
hay for roughage) gradually increasing 
the quantity but never feeding much 
more than seven or eight pounds before 
calving, and giving all the hay the heifer 
will clean up. We supplement this with 
a small amount of the following grain 
mixture: 200 pounds bran, 200 pounds 
crushed oats; 100 pounds coarse ground 
corn ; and 100 pounds oil meal. We try 
to breed our young things at from 15 to 
20 months of age and prefer to have them 
calve at two years or even a little less, 
<provided they have the size) allowing 
them to rest and grow for six months be¬ 
tween calves, rather than have them calve 
for the first time at nearly three years of 
age after attaining a large growth. We 
try to avoid the danger of developing a 
beefy tendency, and believe that the soon¬ 
er a heifer commences milking the bet¬ 
ter. As the time of calving approaches 
every care is given the young heifers. 
About two weeks before parturition they 
are placed in individual box stalls, the 
grain mixture and silage witheld and 
beets or beet pulp and bran substituted, 
in addition to what hay they care to eat. 
After calving we offer only warmed 
water and bran and oats, mashes for sev¬ 
eral days, gradually changing over to a 
grain and silage combination as condi¬ 
tion improves. We aim to test all of our 
first calf heifers, but without any particu¬ 
lar fitting and without forcing. What we 
are after is a normal and true indication 
of their natural ability and future value. 
We take no unnecessary chances of ud¬ 
der trouble, so much to be dreaded in 
young heifers, and all immature records 
are made on light, bulky feeds, such as 
bran, crushed oats, distillers’ grains, etc. 
Certain standards of production should 
be set and striven for, as for instance for 
seven day production; Two year olds, 
375 pounds; cows with second calf 450 
pounds; and mature cows 525 pounds 
and up. We count a cow a good pro¬ 
ducer and a valuable animal that when 
fresh gives a can of milk, testing be¬ 
tween 3.5 and 4.5 per cent, every day, 
and milks most of the year round—not 
one capable of giving about half that 
amount, after standing dry for six 
months, but which tests up to some ab¬ 
normal percentage of butterfat. Keep in 
mind the ideal Holstein cow—a 000- 
pound milker and four per cent, tester, 
that works on a yearly and not a biennial 
schedule for calving. 
Our heifers with first calf are milked 
three times daily for about six weeks 
and then dropped to twice daily and are 
milked as nearly as possible right up un¬ 
til the time of calving again in order to 
fix a tendency for persistence. Also they 
are bred the second time just as soon as 
they are ready—it has been our exper¬ 
ience that it is a wise move to breed a 
young cow when she is ready and not try 
to hold her over until you or some one 
else is ready, to suit somebody’s conven¬ 
ience. They are very apt to forget, or at 
least fail to remember, that their most 
important function is reproduction—in 
such a case of what use is the large two- 
v ,,.,r record? Endeavor to develop a cow 
that will drop a calf every year and yet 
manage to make good records at the same 
time. To my mind the ideal record is the 
official 30-day record which includes the 
best seven days’ performance. They am¬ 
ply demonstrate real merit and ability 
to hold out, and they are absolutely of¬ 
ficial and above criticism. I also favor 
the eight months after calving records, 
but believe that the rules should be 
amended to make it compulsory that a 
cow drop another calf within 15 months 
in order to qualify. 
Troubles of the Milk Business. 
My location is in southwest Otsego Co., 
N. Y. This Spring conditions have been 
very unusual. Things looked favorable 
early, then frost came, which hurt every¬ 
thing severely, followed by drought. 
Then we had rain which increased to 
flood tide. Vegetation has grown finely; 
hay made a fair crop, but the flood de¬ 
stroyed thousands of tons, consequently 
the total amount harvested will be smali. 
Potatoes and oats good, millet for time 
sown 120 per cent. Much has been said 
about the thirty-five cent dollar, and if 
it applies with favor anywhere it does 
to the milk producer. The ability of the 
milk producers to cooperate seems to be 
small. It is well known that the Dairy¬ 
men’s League has been trying to get in 
position to say something about prices. 
The trouble seems to be it is too large a 
thing for one set of men to handle. An¬ 
other difficulty is the perishable nature 
of the milk and its products, also the 
very large number of dairymen and the 
immense territory they occupy seems to 
prevent their forming anything like a 
close organization. Also, the large num¬ 
ber of them who must have their income 
regularly to live, and feel they cannot 
exchange a certainty, although not alto¬ 
gether desirable, for an uncertainty. Just 
the opposite are the milk companies; it 
is easy for them to form any kind of com¬ 
bination they may wish, and act in uni¬ 
son, and over as large a territory as they 
may wish. The question in my mind is, 
are not the larger milk companies cor¬ 
porations with charters doing business 
under the same laws as the railroad and 
other corporations, and to a degree at 
least an interstate business? If so, has 
not the Interstate Commerce Commission 
just as much jurisdiction over the milk 
companies as the railroad companies. As 
I understand it the Interstate Commerce 
Commission is a United States body. If 
it has not jurisdiction then surely a com¬ 
mission could be elected or appointed that 
would have. If freight and passenger 
rates come under their jurisdiction I fail 
to see why milk business might not be. 
There seems to be no limit to the amount 
of control that is lawful for the cities 
and milk companies. I fail to see why 
law should not protect producers as well. 
As it now stands milk producers are un¬ 
der the dictation and domination of all 
the powers that be no matter where lo¬ 
cated. M. 
Otsego Co., N. Y. 
Mechanical Milker. 
“Here are the reasons why I have been 
compelled to buy a milking machine,” 
says a Pennsylvania farmer. 
“I kept from 20 to 25 cows, and it 
was necessary for the hired man and my¬ 
self to leave our field work, and put the 
teams in the barn at 4 o’clock to have 
the milking and chores done at a reason¬ 
able time in the afternoon. I worked one 
team and the hired man another. There 
were fully two hours in which one team 
and the man could be kept busy in the 
late afternoon were it not for the milking. 
I secured the milker, believing my theory 
would be correct that the hired man could 
work until 6 o’clock each evening, and 
the team not be overworked. I found I 
could attend to the milking and do the 
chores in the late afternoon as easily as 
we both could before, and the man could 
be in the field during this time and add 20 
per cent, more to the field work. In the 
morning I do the milking, and the hired 
man does all chores, harnesses the horses, 
and everything is done before breakfast 
and both teams are ready to go to the 
field. Before getting the machine, I was 
unable to get in the field with the second 
team until eight and sometimes nine 
o'clock. I believe the milker has added 
25 per cent, more working time in our 
farm day.” w. J. 
More Egg Records. 
You give a statement of a pen of 
Wyandottes, Leghorns, Barred Rocks and 
It. I. Reds, giving the number of eggs 
laid, and total income of each pen. Were 
they all of the same age? That might 
make a difference in regard to their Win¬ 
ter laying. Which breed has laid the 
most eggs during the Fall and Winter 
months when they were the same age? 
At what time should each breed be 
hatched (if well fed) in order that they 
may mature and a'l be ready to lay by 
the last of Oct. or the forepart of Nov.? 
it. J. E. 
The point made by IT. .T. E. is well 
taken. It might make considerable dif¬ 
ference in the final result if some pen 
began laying heavily at the commence¬ 
ment of the contest when eggs were at 
the highest price, and other pens did not 
begin until a month or so later, although 
at the time the record was taken, the 
later pens had equaled or surpassed the 
first in number of eggs laid. Of course 
they were not all of the same age and did 
not all begin laying at same time. Mr. 
Francais’ Barred Rocks began laying the 
first week laying eight eggs, while 
Brundage’s R. I. Reds did not lay 
until the fourth week and then 
only one egg. By the fifth week 
the Reds had laid eight eggs, and the 
Rocks 7S. As eggs were then worth 
at least five cents each, the Rocks were 
$3.50 ahead at the end of the fifth week. 
To lay the first of Nov. Rocks should 
be hatched by middle of March and R. I. 
Reds by the first of April; though this 
depends partly on the strain; the larger 
the birds the longer it takes to mature 
them. GEO. A. COSGROVE. 
Chickens with Roup. 
I have lost about 20 chickens two 
months old. They get watery, swollen 
eyes which are full of pus. What is the 
cause and how can I help? H. M. 
Massachusetts. 
It is evident that your chicks are suf¬ 
fering from some infectious disease of the 
nature of roup, whether true roup or not. 
When a whole flock of youngsters gets 
into the condition which you describe, the 
outlook for their recovery and future use¬ 
fulness is not bright. A chick stunted by 
disease is of very doubtful value and if 
used later in a breeding pen can only 
transmit a measure of its own depleted 
vitality and become a curse to future 
generations. Without knowing the con¬ 
ditions under which your chicks have 
been hatched and raised, no one can say 
what the origin of your trouble was. If 
they have been exposed to cold and damp¬ 
ness in their living quarters, or to over¬ 
heating and chilling in improper brood¬ 
ers, or to contact with other sick fowls, 
or to quarters in which sick fowls have 
been kept, or if they have inherited weak 
constitutions from parents of little vigor, 
their succumbing to infection is easily 
accounted for. Preventive measures are 
the only valuable measures, but preven¬ 
tive measures in such cases mean all 
those things which conduce to health and 
vigor, whether connected with selection 
of breeders, hatching, brooding or feed¬ 
ing. Remedial measures should now con¬ 
sist of removal from the flock of all sick 
chicks and their confinement by them¬ 
selves. The brooders, or houses, in which 
they have been kept should be thoroughly 
cleaned and disinfected. Utensils should 
also be cleansed with boiling water. 
Whitewash will disinfect the interiors of 
buildings. Change the litter of brooders 
often and see that they are kept light, 
clean and airy and that they are dry. 
Add permanganate of potash to the drink¬ 
ing water of the chicks, making as strong 
a solution as they will drink, a teaspoon¬ 
ful, or more, to the gallon. Under fav¬ 
orable conditions of housing, feeding and 
general care, the more lightly affected of 
the chicks will probably recover; those at 
all deficient in vitality will probably die. 
m. b. n. 
“And, gentlemen of the jury, so say 
you all?” inquired the judge of a certain 
Arkansas circuit, after the verdict had 
been brought in. “Well, the rest of us 
do. and I reckon I ort to,” responded the 
smallest and most paltry-looking mem¬ 
ber of the assortment of peers. “l r ou 
see, I originally differed with, or from— 
whichever is proper—the rest of these 
vere gentlemen; but they beat me all 
holler playin’ checkers, downed me at 
memblety-peg,. and then every one of 
’em, when we wrestled, grab-holds, to see 
which side of the question was right, 
throwed me flat and set on me. So, all 
things considered, and keepin’ to the 
agreement, I say, with the balance of 
’em, that the prisoner at the bar—I 
sorter forgit what his name is—is guilty 
as charged.”—Puck. 
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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
833 WEST 30th ST., NEW YORK. 
