Kingsbury County independent. (DeSmet, Kingsbury County, S.D.) 1894-1929, 1908-01-31
Profit Making Dairy Shorthorns.
Written by J.. H. Slaght, Gsnesse County, Mich

breed is hat the beet cows are not
noted for milk and often DO NOT give
enough 10 grow cali necessarily,
cows sometimes having 10 De kept
to raise one calf. There are doubtless
many exceptions. but when The eXcep-
tionS are marked they are general puf-
pose COWS. TO illustrate the difference
in real value between the beef and
dairy S~horthorrs permit me TO quot
from the Special Report on Diseases
of Cattle and Cattle Feeding, issued Ny
the United States department of aGrl-
culture in 1892. The report states that
ii requires about seventeen pounds or
digestiblc nutrients TO sustain the HE
of an OK Cor cow each day so that
ne will neither lose nor gain in weight.
The OK is supposed to weigh 1000
pounds and to be kept perfectly COM
Portable as to temperature ana enNlr-
onment and to do no work, or, If q cow,
10 give no milk or TO be otherwise Wor-
ried or exercised. AS it requires the
same noun of feed 10 sustain the
life and we'll being of a poor or inferior
dairy COW as 1t does a good n and
as the good one does twice or three
times the work that the inferior n is
capable OF doing in supplying milk for
the dairy or for raising calves, II is
just us valuable for making beef when
not giving milk. il is not difficult to see
that Il large portion of the food that
goes to sustain the animal
or the life of two or three inferior
mixers to 10 what one good COW can
do, is lost to the feeder, TO say moth
ing about the care they require or the
room they occupy, Every Gairyman
understands this, ana il he has a COW,
nom matter how attractive in appear
anCe she may be. IF she does not return
a dollars worth of milk for a dollars
wort Of food CHI. anrr, &, JS--A-nl OF
and tlnds her way to the shambles.
Purely beet cattle have the merit of
making beef Of fine quality. as well rs
making it rapidly and economically,
and are thus profitable to the ranch
man or any one whose only object Is
to raise beef: but to the general farm
er the dairy Shorthorn has the double
advantage of making equally as good
a quality of beef, just as rapidly and
quite as economically, and of being
more than double the value if desired
for dairy purposes.
After more than twenty years eXper-
lence in raising a milking strain of
cattle the writer would con
tinue to try to improve in the same
line, believing that while he does not
as high prices for the stock
sells as the breeders of the beef
breeds do, they are more profitable to
80 NhAi'ti va III
When me writer first heard the late
William Ball, of Hamburg, talk cattle.
he was a vigorous advocate Of the
single purpose cattle, but later. aft
er more experience and observation,
in an address before a farmers
institute, he as earnestly ad-
vocated the duai~purpose stock and ex-
pressed himself as of the opinion thai
of all the breeds the S~horthorns we're
best adapted TO that purpose.
Mr.. William Gafna, the former owner
Of the famous Moss Rose 4th. clearly
indicated his preference for the dairy
Shorthorns when, after his public sale
of stock a few years go, | was in
formed, he sold her at a good price and
later bought her back at a considerable
advance over the sale price, and let
the beef cattle go.
1t will require many years OF care
Jul, painstaking selection and breeding
to develop the ideal general-purpose
cow so h a she will be satisfactory
in all points and have those character
istics so fixed that they will be trans
mitted from sire and dam with almost
unerri0g certainty from generation to
generation.
May we not hope tina; some young
American, with the Dersistency and
good sense Of a Bates. a Booth. or a
Cru~ickshank, may yet take this matter
up and carry it to a successful issue
and thus become a benefactor of the
race.
The writer is Of the opinion that,
with proper selection and breeding the
Shorthorns may be made to excel the
Jerseys in the mount Of milk given, to
AT least equal to them in the amount
of butte" produced and to far excel
them in the amount and quality of beef
products, though the quality of milk
and butter produced By The Jersey may
never me eXcelled. 1t requires a per-
sistent determination, almost amount
ing to st~ubbornness, to break over the
rule and breed The higher priced.
though less intrinsically valuable beef