The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1884-02-15
Fancy Pedigree Stock.

The necessary cost of producing q colt
or calf which at two years old will sell
for two or three hundred dollars is
scarcely more than that of putting into
market the scrub which must 90 at
forty or fifty dollars. or less. He who
has courage to do so may buy ten cows,
the calves of which will sell readily for
one thousand dollars; he may get three
mares, the foals of which will bring q
like sum each year; or he may buy sim
gle ewes, the lambs of which will find
ready buyers at prices between
two hundred and five hundred
dollars. One may go even far
Their than this; he may buy one COW,
or single mare, the offspring of which
viii almost certainly sell for prices of
four figures or more. There are ewes
so highly valued that their lambs bring
five hundred to one thousand dollars;
the calves of some COWS in this country
are eagerly sought at prices which
would pay for large herd of scrubs,
and it is generally known that there are
many colts from high-bred sires and
dams for which the value of good
farm would be refused without a mo-
ment's hesitation. Yet the necessary
cost of raising and of keeping the more
valuable of these animals will not ex-
coed that of keeping the scrub in the
condition in which even the scrub
should be kept This is by no means
an extreme statement, nor do the prices
mentioned represent fictitious values,
for high prices can be obtained with
more certainty than can the quotations
in the live stock markets. be obtained
for even very good bullocks and fat
wethers.
One fact is seen in the market for
stock of all kinds and of all degrees of
breeding, from the sorriest scrub to the
purest bred animal of fancy pedigree.
1t is, that the better the animal, the
more readily it will sell, even when the
figures asked are very high. When re-
verses come in market for stock of
any kind, it is the poorest in quality
which suffers first and most. While
this is true of the market for animals
ready for slaughter, it is more emphati-
cally true of stock kept for breeding
purposes. Of late much has been said
against the payment of prices reaching
well into the thousands for animals of
fancy pedigree, but it cannot be denied
that when a man pays the market price
for animals which are ready and fit for
slaughter only he knows that he has
given very near their well-defned value;
but when he buys well-bred COW or
mare or other breeding animal he
knows only that he has given its then
market value, but no one can tell how
much more valuable that animal may
prove itself to be. Nearly all progress
in breeding, almost all Improvement in
domestic animals, has been made by the
men who have been ready to pay prices
their neighbors were then, as now,
ready to declare fanciful, foolish or in
sane, as some of the newspaper are
now saying the prices offered for
Fuller's wonderful Jersey COW and for
others of her kind are fanciful or insane.
These writers, like many who do not
write, are fond of predicting that ruin
must come to the men who buy animals
at such figures; but it does not seem to
occur to them to say that in almost all
cases buyers of stock of this description
are men of acknowledged enterprise
capable business managers who have
made their own money, and, it may be
fairly conceded, know how to spend it
judiciously for further profit or for
pleasure. Louis Republican.