454 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Juxx, 1898. 
is the crucial question. Does she yield 100 Ib. of butter in the year? If that 
is the result, then we find that it costs £6 5s. to produce that 100 1b. of butter ; 
and if that butter is sold at 10d. per lb., her owner finds himself £2 1s. 8d. in 
debt by keeping her. : 
Now, if she produces 150 lb., tlien at the sale price of 10d. per lb., the 
owner comes out just even. His cow has cost £6 5s. to keep, and his butter 
fetches £6 5s., but no’account is taken here of the year’s labour. Taking that 
into consideration, he is yet in debt to the amount of the value of his labour. 
Does the cow produce 2001b. of butter? 200 1b. at 10d. is £8 6s. Sd. This 
has now cost him only 74d., say, to produce, so that he comes out £2 6s. 8d. to 
the good. 
If she produces 250 lb. of butter, the cost of production is still further 
lessened, say, to Gd. per 1b. ‘Thus, while his butter selis for £10 8s. 4d., the 
owner has only expended £6 5s. on the cow, and has realised a profit of £4 3s, 4d. 
Now, which kind of cow does it pay best to keep? A scrubber, which will at 
best give 100 lb. of butter per annum, or a well-bred beast which yields 250 lb. P 
The answer is obvious. 
Cows capable of producing 250 Ib. of butter yearly are not rare in this 
colony, and every dairyman should have them. 
CROSS-BREEDING IN AUSTRALIA. 
By “ARAB.” 
In your issue of April you publish a paper by Mr. Robert Bruce on “ Hints as 
to New Breeds of Cattle.” 
It is a pity that our Australian experience in cross-breeding should be left 
unobserved and unrecorded ; properly observed and recorded, it would be most 
valuable for collation for educational purposes. | 
The present-day facilities of transit and communication, together with the 
wealth of our grazing industry, has allowed of many fads, fancies, or experiments 
in breeding being practised; then the necessities of the early colonists compelled 
them to get stock from anywhere they could be had at lowest cost, Africa, 
America, Europe, and Asia being drawn upon for supplies. 
This has resulted in a singularly rich and varied experience in cross- 
breeding, and we have not done with it yet, if we may judge from the rapid 
increase of late of Jersey and Ayrshire types amongst our herds. 
In this connection the publication of Mr. Bruce’s paper may do good. 
Many small graziers, owing to the low price of fats, are going for milk, and 
(though loth to lessen the value of their herds for butchers’ purposes, as meat 
yalues may, like spring, come again) think there is no other way of obtaining 
milk but by going on the hard barebones lines of Ayrshire or Jersey. 
If Mr. Bruce’s paper serves to convince those men that they may retain 
the butcher's value of their herds, and have them equally as valuable to the 
dairyman as barebones Jersey and Ayrshire, it will be a most opportune 
publication. ' 
I contributed to your Journal two papers bearing on the same matter 
previously, and for seyen years past I have with most satisfactory results been 
practising what I preach. If those papers serve to arrest the wholesale 
deterioration of our herds for meat-producing purposes—by the introduction of 
‘such highly specialised specimens as the Jersey and Ayrshire undoubtedly 
are— they will serve a good purpose. 
I haye no desire to reflect on the intelligence and practical knowledge 
which, combined, has gone to specialise the Ayrshire and Jersey herds, which 
are singularly well fitted for the circumstances under which they were formed 
and specialised, but stiil maintain that they are not best adapted for our more 
generous surroundings as to climate and pasturage. , 
