The Florida agriculturist., 1906-03-07

year and a good dairy animal the
next, any more than a horse can be
! a plow-hOrse one year and race
winner the next.
Let us see what these types are:
Your ideal dairy COW should show
width between the eyes; good length
in face; neck thin, medium in length,
and set neatly into thin shoulders,
free of flesh and fat; the backbone
should be open; ribs thin, springing
and wide apart; the hips wide. slight
ly covered with flesh; thighs thin /;
udder full but not heshy; milk veins
long and prominent; stomach girth
large, thus causing the animal to show
the prominent milk wedge; hair should
be fine and silky; the skin soft, mel
low and pliable. This type shows
angular form upon the individual All
food consumed goes to milk and but
ter rather than flesh and meat.
The beef cow, on the other hand,
presents an altogether different ap-
pearence. She does not transform
her food into milk or butter fat. Miser
that she is, she boards it on her body.
Some of it is in the short, thick, heavy
neck; the shoulders, too, are heavy;
the back broad, deep and thick; hips
are even and we'll covered with meat;
thighs thick and full; udder small
and deficient; milk veins absent; and
the underline parallel with the top.
When these lines are present the ami
NAL becomes a good, effective machine
for doing its work in beef making
The scrub, on the other hand, be-
longs to neither of these types; con-
Sequently she is of little value in the
dairy herd or at the butchers block.
Nor does the scrub possess quality,
one of the most essential characteris-
tics of good beef or good dairy farm.
To these ideals must the successful
cattle raiser direct his course.
And now you agree with me?
| know you do. 1t is the only
wayne must improve our stock. We
must get rid of these old, out-of-date
dairy machines and beef machines or
else improve them. We can do both
we can dispose of the worst in the lot
and use the better kinds for our foun-
datiOn stock. We can do this Tor all
classes of farm animals.
A good male-pure-bred and posses
sing quality and form-can readily be
purchased at a very moderate price. |
And like begets hke,you know.
The male is half the herd.
This process of breeding UP is not |
slow. A single male we'll bred and |
pure bred will treble the efficiency of |
the first generation. In a single year |
500 pigs may be improved from The |
Use of single individual. From fifty |
10 one hundred calves may have the
accumulated breeding of good ami
males, and all from the use of single |
sire in one year.
Slow work? you say. Why, breed
ng and improving come rapidly, when
you once believe in the principle. Will
you use scrub males or partially i'm
proved males for breeding purposes?
And you can bet pure bred hog |
or ten to twenty dollars; pure bred
pull for one hundred. Surely you will |
lot use the scrub. Should you do so,
you will breed down, not up.
My plea, then, is much stock and
good stock; the abandonment of any
male of mixed or scrub breeding;
he saving of offspring of only indi-
yiduals of merit; and lastly, the trend
IF breeding operations in the direc-
ion of Improvement and permanency.
Give us these things and we shall
axe yet another long stride toward
hat $500 more year in farming.