474 
Annual Report of the 
evening would be to give some hints as to how to make dairy farm¬ 
ing profitable. 
His observation in this country led him to believe that the best 
cow, for all the practical purposes of the farmer, is produced by a 
cross breed between the Short-horns and the Native cow. Such a 
cross would give the best and largest quantity of milk, and also was 
the best for beef. He said, also, that the larger breeds, like the 
Short-horns, would give a larger product of milk for the feed given 
them, than would be obtained from the smaller breeds, like the 
Devons, the Ayrsliires or the Jerseys; from which he was led to 
prefer the larger kinds of stock. The cow, the dairymen’s factor, 
is, so to speak, a machine for converting forage into milk, veal, beef, 
and butter and cheese made of milk. Call the first cost of the ma¬ 
chine for making milk $100; it must be kept running day and 
night, summer and winter, Sundays as well as other days. Suppose 
it takes 15 pounds of hay a day to run this machine, 20 pounds if 
she were not comfortably and well housed in cold weather, say 2} 
to 3} tons of hay a year—this will barely keep the machine run¬ 
ning. If not thus furnished the machine stops. If 20 pounds of 
hay, or its equivalent be required to keep the cow alive, then the 
owner of the machine gets nothing. Give her 25 pounds, and she 
gives him 5 pounds of milk equal to one-half pound of cheese a day; 
give her 30 pounds, and he gets one pound of cheese a day, or 365 
pounds a year, or its equivalent. In this calculation, 30 pounds of 
hay per day, produces 63} pounds of cheese for each ton of hay; 40 
pounds of hay per day, would jueld 100 pounds of cheese from each 
ton of hay. On this hypothesis, a ton of hay in excess of the amount 
necessary to keep up the animal heat and sustain vitality, gives 200 
pounds of cheese. Thus it is desirable to get cows that will yield 
most over the cost of keeping, or of running the machine. If a cow 
eat 33 pounds a day, or its equivalent of grass, it will require four 
acres, at 1} tons per acre, to keep a cow a year, which, according 
to the present hypothesis, would produce 401} pounds of cheese a 
year. A farm of 30 acres would support twenty cows, yielding 
8000 pounds of cheese; increase the productiveness of the farm 
one-half, and keep twenty cows that will eat one-half as much again, 
and we should then get 21,600 pounds of cheese. 
If the cheese be worth 15 cents a pound, a farm of 80 acres, at 
3} tons per acre, with 20 cows, would give a return of $1,024 50; 
