Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1905-08-15
Improvement of Dairy Stock.


Ii has often been said, and with mucl
truth, that there can be found in tn,
United States now much better speci
mems of the pure bred Jersey stock thar
can be found in England or in the chan
mel islands, which are their native home
There are good reasons why this SHOULD
be true The first that were brough
here were mostly of small size, and pro
duced small amounts of milk very rich
in butter fat. Naturally they fell into
the hands of men who could afford tC
pay the high prices which they cost, and
could also afford to feed them literally
and did so. They were called the ricl
mans pets, and it required time to show
that they were also good cows for the
poor man who desired to make butter
instead of selling milk.
In New England they were turned into
the best pastures instead of being tether-
ed out with a rope as their ancestors had
been on the island. The exercise they
gained in roaming the fields and climb
ing the hillsides gave them more muscle
and larger frame. AS our pastures Oc-
casionally failed in times of drought to
furnish food enough, the farmers began
to grow corn and other forage crops to
feed them at such times. Many owners
also supplemented the green feed in sum-
mer and hay in winter with grain or food
containing more of the milk producing
elements than hay alone. This kept up
the good reputation of their pets and at
the same time led their calves to grow
larger and had tendency to increase the
milk production of each generation. As
they became more numerous the process
of selection began. Calves were raised
from the best cows and those that were
much inferior were kept to grow veal
calves. More than all the rest, perhaps,
the improvement was kept up by using
only bulls from the best milk producing
cows, others being killed or sold to some
one who wished to infuse strain of
Jersey blood into his native herds.
As result of this practice it is as easy
now to find Jersey cows weighing eight
hundred or nine hundred pounds and
giving sixteen to eighteen quarts, or
thirty-four to forty pounds of milk day,
as it was forty years ago to find them
weighing $50 pounds and producing ten
to twelve quarts of milk day. And
they have also by good feeding and
warm stables been made to give milk
more months in the year, until now the
difficulty with many of them is to get
them to go dry even few weeks before
dropping their calves.
Something of the same improvement
has been going on in the Holstien-Frie-
sian stock during the last fifteen years,
if not longer. Imported here as produc-
ers of milk to the amount of thirty to
thirty-five quarts day it was generally
acknowl lodged that their milk was not
rich in butter fat. They found in our
pasture grasses more nutritious and bet.
ter adapted to making butter than those
growing on the dixie meadows of Hol-
land, but they grew less luxuriantly, and
their owners found il necessary to grow
much green fodder to use in the summer
and ensilage to feed during the winter to
till their capacious paunches, and keep
up the large flow of milk. They also
used the grain feeds with these, and if
this did not show much effect upon the
quality of the milk from these first cows,
time has shown it in later generations.
The process of saving as breeding stock
the progeny of those cows which showed
by the Babcock method of testing the
milk that their product contained the
most butter fat aided in the good work,
and now it is not unusual TO find herds
whose milk shows an average test OF 81
to 4 per cent. butter fat, while individual
cows have shown Al to ) per cent. at GER
tain periods of lactation. There has also
been a tendency to round out the forms
of the animals better, thus giving them
a better appearance when fitted for beef.
But great as has been the progress
made by these two pure breeds under
American handling, it is but small when
compared with that made by the use OF
the pure bred bulls for crossing upon
our native cattle, when the cross has
been made with good judgment and good
feeding and care has accompanied it.
To understand some of the causes OF
success or failure in this grading up OF
the native herds or scrub stock, as some
advocates of pure breeds prefer to call
them, it is necessary to look back little
for the history of those herds. They are
not native in the sense of being indigenous
to America, but are descendants from
the cattle brought here by the early set
tiers of New England, mostly between
1924 and 1910, or little later. They
came, as did the Puritan settlers them
selves, from nearly every country in
England, and probably were selected
from the best those countries had.
Devonshire sent her little red cattle
and Durham her larger cattle, We know
them for beef qualities, though the Col
lins Brothers had not then begun to de-
velop them into what We know as Short
Horns. Hereford sent some white-faced
cattle, and the Long Horns were doubt
less from Yorkshire and Lancashire.
There were probably few polled cattle
from Norfolk, and from the northern
countries, or from Scotland itself, came
the Ayrshires, famous for milk produc-
ton even then.
Those early settlers certainly had but
little knowledge of the principles Of
scientific breeding for improvement, but
as the settlements were not near to-
gether and but few bulls were imported
excepting in the dams, there was prob
ably much inbreeding which served to
fix the characteristics of the various
breeds SO firmly that some Of the ami
mails descended from them could have
been shown as lately as half century
ago as high grades of the various breeds.