Norwich bulletin., 1910-11-26

l l suppose you've heard of Josephine | of Missouri? She's the Holstein- F'riesian COW which has just finished a six months milk test by producing in that time an average of 93.4 pounds of milk daily This is figured to be the 1 equivalent of 11.6 gallons daily. That is going some" eh? Apparently it means that shed fill four ordinary milk pails every day-fll 'em so full that the hired nan'd be reasonably sure to spill come getting it to the strainer She's mighty good COW, that's sartin sure. But she's an xception-indeed, | she's the one exception. No other COW | in the world ever came within fourteen hundred pounds as much milk in Six months. So the records say.
 Wouldn't it be very much like rain bow chasing for us to demand. each ] one of us, that all his cows should hence forth give eleven and a half gall | Ions of milk day? What good would i it do us to expect it and to get mad at them because they didn't do it? As a matter of fact, I suppose most of us 1 will have to be satisfied with COWS that don't average five gallons of milk a day for six months. For one, I shall have no kick coming if Old Brindle does as well as that. I'll bet that there are COWS in the same herd with Jo- sephine which don't do that-don't and won't and can't be made to. But we near dil dUOUt JOSeIllU6-anQ we QOn hear anything about the several million others who are the rule to which she is an exception.
 It's the some with lots of other things about farming. The institute speakers and the agricultural college professors and the farm papers are all the time full of stories of wonderful crops or wonderful critters-sone of which are probably true. Well. what of It? These rainbow hued yarns are told just because they are rainbow hued and therefore. not usual Most colts are born with four legs and their arrival on earth is not heralded in the papers. When one is born with six or seven legs, he gets written up" and we all read about him. Neverthe- less, most colts will continue to be born with four legs and, considering all things in their order, it seems to me a mighty good thing that they should be. Personally, I should prefer colt with four legs to one with half dozen. Four are enough to get mixed up with the traces. blowing. any more would be two, two hutch" as Artemas Ward used to say And there are hens; the number and size of hen stories, these days, are calculated to put ordinary fish stories out of com petition.
 There's the girl whose father cave her one chicken from the newly hatch ed brood for her own, and she nursed It and took care of It. and it began to lay in the fall, and laid nine dozen eggs that winter with eggs at forty five cents a dozen and next spring if matched out sixteen broilers which sold at a dollar a pair, and that made net profit of S1205 from the fowl which didn't cost her anything and which the father bought the feed for.
 We'll guess; why can't every other girl do the same" that's the question. Because she CAN'T. that's the first answer and it's enough for the pres ent That much advertised chicken was an exception and 8 freak. If all hens were like her and did the same work, eggs wouldn't be worth forty five cents a hundred nor broilers over nickel a pair. We should all go tc raising eggs and broilers and glut the market Why, one year my white IeGhorns laid handsomely all through the winter. The very next winter 2 like number of similar bullets. same age, same breed. same strain, in the same hen house, with the same feed and the same care didn't give me an egg from the time they began moult- ing in November till the next March. If I'd been editor of a poultry iour nal I might have told Of that first winter but I should have kept mighty still about the second one.
 That's the way it noes all throuqh the farmers year. There are some ten millions of us digging dirt and raising crops and animals. Some of us are going to be exceptions to all rules. Some one of us may be sent to congress, sometime, though I don't think that's likely to happen right away; some one of us may be hanged for murder; some one of us may raise a COW thatH give eleven gallons of milk 8 day, and someone 8 chicken thatH give him more eggs in the win ter than all the rest of the year But we are, the most of us, going to keep out of congress and jail and are go- ing to have to get along with cows which fill the pail only twice a day and with hens that lay best when eggs are cheap. It's our duty as well as our privilege to do what we can to increase the average yield Of eggs and milk. But it's worse than silly to pay over much heed to these phenomenal exceptions which make up so unfair a proportion of the stories printed about farming and farm products
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