440 
STATE AGEICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
the factories began to understand and practice this principle, that American 
cheese took character in the European markets; and the wonderful develop¬ 
ment of the dairy interest, has been due not wholly to the factory system, 
but to the fine character of goods which they manufacture. The English 
Cheddar process is similar in principle. I shall refer to it further on. 
But to return to the question. I think our dairy farmers made a mistake 
in their exclusive devotion to one single branch, and that a mixed agricul¬ 
ture, mating the dairy the leading branch, would have given better results. 
The English dairymen in the great dairy districts in the west of England de¬ 
vote but little land to meadows. They grow wheat, barley and other grains. 
They produce wool, mutton and beef. The herds in winter are fed upon 
chopped straw, with the addition of oil cake, bran and coarse grains. Large 
profits are thus realized and the land kept in a high state of fertility. 
Some of the Herkimer county farmers are beginning to adopt this system 
with success. Our soil is tenacious and more difficult to be worked than 
yours but it yields large crops of wheat, barley, oats and corn. Some carry 
a few acres of hops but this is not generally to be recommended, as hops are 
an uncertain crop, variable in price and rob the farmer of the maJiures. 
Fruit culture when it can be successfully conducted is better. One of my 
neighbors in an adjoining town has 6,000 pear trees just coming into bearing 
and the profits from this source must soon be large, as the fruit sells readily at 
from $5 to |8 per barrel. 
To you, in Wisconsin, where grain can be raised with more facility than 
with us, the system of mixed husbandry in connection with the dairy, it 
would seem, must result in the most profit. Then if you abandon the use of 
the “ scrub native cow,” and adopt the English system of selecting animals 
that will readily fatten, and turn them as they do into beef before they be¬ 
come old and worn out; your coarse grains, your bran and ship stuffs, it 
seems to me, if fed up and converted into milk, beef and bacon, must bring 
more moiiey than to ship them to eastern markets. 
BREEDING STOCK FOR THE DAIRY. 
A great many writers urge upon dairymen the breeding of a race of cattle 
for milk alone. Mr. Fish, of Herkimer, experimented in that way. He im¬ 
proved his herd so that it averaged a yield of between 800 and 900 pounds 
of cheese per cow, but the constitution of the animals became so impaired 
and weakened, that it did not prove profitable. Cows that will yield 590 to 
600 pounds of cheese and then can be easily made ready for the butcher, are 
all that we should ask. Milch cows are liable to many accidents; some prove 
inferior for the dairy, lose a portion of the udder, fail in milk easily or run 
farrow. Such animals, if of a breed that will fatten readily, can be cheaply 
turned into beef, and if they have not proved profitable for the dairy are 
made to pay a profit for the shambles. 
ENGLISH CHEESE-MAKING. 
I went out to Europe in 1866, for the American Dairymen’s Association, 
examined the different methods of cheese-making in England. 
