810 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Oocrt., 1897 
The General Purpose Cow. 
By JAMES MOFFAT 
Tire bad odour in which the Durham is held as a milker by the present 
generation of Australians, is only justified by their experience of this breed 
being limited to Australia of the last twenty-five years. Thirty years ago 
we had many herds of splendid milking Durhams that would have realised as 
springers £26 per head in the markets of Scotland, at least £10 per head over 
Ayrshires. In fact, there was then no scarcity of good milkers, and never a 
suspicion of either Ayrshire or Jersey blood existed amongst them. 
The early settlers of New South Wales had imported Durhams in the 
early days of the colony at a time when they were still best known and famed 
for milkers under the name of “Teeswaters,” and their stock remained good for 
milk down to the end of the sixties. After this, the open-shouldered, square, 
beefy Durhams became common, and gradually the milking qualities of our ~ 
cattle disappeared. In 1883 I travelled a good bit amongst the farms of 
New Zealand, and saw some of the most noted herds of Ayrshires—E, K, 
Ferguson’s, of Blueskin, amongst others—but in every instance the Durham 
herds of their neighbours were more valuable even for dairy purposes, taking 
no aceount of their much greater value as butchers’ cattle. 
The cross of a Durham bull from a milking strain on other breeds has so 
frequently proved so successful in producing record milkers, that the wonder is 
that there should be any doubt as to its superiority for improving the milking 
stock of the colony. 
The cross betwixt an Ayrshire cow and Durham bull is at present the 
established favourite of the dairy farmers of Scotland. Some forty years ago, 
cows we bred in Scotland on those lines were extraordinary milkers compared 
with the Ayrshires under same treatment as to byre and pasturage. 
In Yorkshire, the home of the milking Durham, a West Highland Kyloe 
heifer, bred to a Durham bull, produced an animal that excelled as a butter cow 
the breeder’s Durham stock; and yet the Kyloe is not a milk breed by any 
means. - 
Recently, in the South of England, the record milker was bred from a Devon 
cow and Durham bull, and the Devon is not reckoned amongst the milk breeds. 
Tn horse breeding, if a small thoroughbred mare is bred to a heavy draught 
horse, the progeny will be given a heavy top, while the gaskins will be quite 
thin and deficient; and this happens, though both sire and dam had good 
gaskins. For the same reason, the Durham, being heavier than the Ayrshire, 
Devon, or Kyloe breeds—when crossed on those brecds—gives breadth on top, 
and reduces the weight of flesh on thighs, and thus gives better lines fora 
milk-producing animal, and adds many units to her total number of points as 
a milker. 
This fact, I believe, accounts in a great measure for the success bulls of 
a Durham milking strain have in producing record milkers from such breeds as 
Kyloe, Devon, and Ayrshire. 
Breeding horses for work, cattle for beef, or pigs for hams—if the male 
animal be of a smaller type or breed than the female, the best results will be 
obtained ; but, in my experience, the reverse seems to hold good when breeding 
for milk. 
By using Devon or Kyloe cows and a Durham bull, the progeny retain the 
rich quality of milk of the dam; and the breadth given above the pail with the 
thin thighs all tend to produce better lines for milk than either the Kyloe, 
Devon, or Durham parents possessed. 
The Normanby cattle 1 alluded to in a previous paper had evidently been 
bred from cows of a Celtic origin with bulls of a “Teeswater” strain. Beside 
