The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1904-02-16
Selecting Dairy Cows.


Selecting Dairy Cows.
Editors Progressive Farmer:
The enthusiastic and encouraging articles on
the selection and charging of a herd of milking
COWS lately published by you will doubtless be the
means of inducing some reader to invest in and
pursue that line of business. Let me take excep-
ton to SO much as is passing about IN the farm
papers about types and conformation as guides
in purchasing. If you are offered the choice In q
herd you are making an investment for a business
purpose, which is the production of milk or but
ter, or both. You want animals that will live and
thrive and produce.
Let me urge the young dairyman to find out
what the animals will actually do, instead of using
a scale of points. Weigh the milk, and, if making
butter, set and churn a days milk and know what
she can produce. If a Babcock Tester is availa-
BILE take samples of as many different cows milk
as you please at least twice, and learn the butter
fat content of the days yield for each one. Then
buy the profitable COWS even at an advance price.
If your money comes by hard work, surely a lit
tie personal trouble is not too much to put forth
to guide your judgment in buying.
It is said one should not eat If he does not
work, but it is equally true that a dairy cow must
be a good hearty feeder or she cannot yiAld well.
Get vigor of constitution, industry In search of
food, good assimilation of ~rations, a known profit
able yield, and you have q profitable investment
for several years.
To know this it is at least safe to secure the
option of purchase and take them to your own
place, feed and treat them the best you can, weigh
or measure the milk, and test it. At the end of
the week agree that you may return any by pay
ing one or two dollars for the use of her for the
time. 1t is money well spent. You find which are
hard, reluctant mixers, which gives a thin watery
milk. If even a good mixer proves of ugly tenn
per and horns and hooks other stock, it may not
pay to purchase. The fact that a cow carries
some flesh over her shoulders and a smooth hide
is not against her if the churn or Babcock Test
shows the butter is there. I once bought a cow
with three teats on pedigree for the calves I might
raise. She never gave over nine or ten quarts,
but trial showed she produced more butter than
others giving 16 quarts. She used no more feed
and did credit to her sire that had many tested
of the rangy, loose jointed type, but she paid from
every point of view.
Consider the COW a machine for turning good
ration into dairy products, and demand good
health and actual capacity to pay a profit.
In buying, first determine what you want to do.
Shall you compete at low prices with thin milk,
or can you prove to customers that you furnish q
superior article, and that they can afford to pay
you the top price, If you start to do that. stick
to your plan. Knowing which are richest mixers.
blend their milk with others not so good or that
are lately fresh. Don't give a customer milk max
ing % per cent cream one week and 10 per cent
the next. Better give 16 per cent all the time.
Attention to these and other details will take
some time, but broadens the man as well as his
selected for raising from the known ability of the
dam, and not go for veal because they are on hand
when the market wants meat.
If by skill, selection tests, and breeding. our
new dairyman in FIVE years collects q herd of ten
that will give a churn yield of 800 pounds of but
ter each, he 10 to be called indeed a dairyman. and
If they viii average $50 pounds, he is indeed for
tunate. j. T. g.
Buncombe Co, N. C.