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like the cat of the fable, may seem modest, but after the race give us credit for what we merit.

We believe the Jersey cow in her line of work is better adapted to the needs of the mortgaged farm of Ohio than any other breed here represented. That she is capable of producing more dollars' worth of butter from the same amount of feed than any other breed. She is better adapted to the mortgaged farm than any of the beef breeds, because beef-producers of Ohio can not compete with the products of the cheap corn and the pasture of the far West, and with the additional dairy-work she can make the profit of one year's product equal to the price of a three-year-old bullock.

She will bring more dollars' worth of butter from the same amount of feed; first, because she will produce more butter, and second, because her butter is in greater demand, especially during July and August, when other butter has either to be corked up in a jug or supported by diminutive icebergs. These conclusions have been drawn partly from my own experience and partly from the testimony of others.

I am a small breeder of Jersey cattle, generally carrying from fifteen to twenty head, and my experience dates back about twelve years. My first awakening to the especial merits of this great butter breed was a number of years since. We had two family cows and a heifer just fresh for the first time. This was the 6th of December. One of the cows was just dry and would be fresh one month hence, January 6. The other cow was due to be fresh in five months. We were making so much more butter than our family used, that we began sending the surplus to a grocer in Wheeling at this date, December 6, and continued to do so from the two cows for the first month, and from the three afterwards until the 6th of April. Their daily feed, in addition to hay, was eight pounds of bran and corn-meal mixed. We found from the grocer's book that we had sold 305 pounds of butter, which, with the addition of thirty-five pounds of butter used at home, made a total of 340 pounds of butter, besides the milk and cream used in the family. The price ran up to thirtyfive cents a pound, and the quality was such that the grocer offered us thirty cents through the next year, and said he could dispose of 100 pounds per week of that quality.

Last year, if all our cream had been made into butter, counting two heifers as one mature cow, my herd would have averaged 360 pounds, or $117 to the cow. This was on light dairy feed, viz.:

Fifty pounds of corn ensilage per day for 150 days, or four tons, at
$ per cow

Eight pounds of hay, or two-thirds tons per cow....

Four pounds of oil-meal and three pounds of bran mixed, for 150
days, and half that for 150 days (fall and spring)........

Pasture for seven months, at $1.50 (fall and spring)

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.......

$8 00 4 00

18 00

10 50

4 00

$44 50

$117 00

72 50

We have the fertilizer and skim-milk as pay for the labor of milking, care of stock, etc.

We give this, not because it is extraordinary, but because it is our own experience and produced on very light feed. Others have done much better.

The herd of J. W. Shuster, of Gansevoort, New York, averaged 380 pounds of butter per cow last year, ending March 15, 1891.

The Lakeside herd of Hastings, Michigan, the first year after importation, produced an average of 4641 pounds of butter to the cow.

There have been nearly 2,000 Jersey cows that have made records of from fourteen to forty-six pounds of gilt-edged butter in seven days. There is no accident about this. No strain is especially distinguished above all the rest. The honors are divided among many families. There are the Coomassies, and the St. Lamberts, the Rioters, Rioter-Alpheas, Stoke-Pogis-Victor Hugos, the Signals, St. Heliars and Victors, and a host of other families largely represented in this great roll of honor.

Of the Coomassie family we have Oxford Kate, with a record of thirty-nine pounds and twelve ounces in seven days; an amount of butter equaled by no cow outside of the Jersey breed. Also, of the same family, we have the phenomenal cow Princess 2d, with a record of forty-six pounds and 12 ounces in seven days, surpassing the best record of any other breed by more than seven pounds.

The famous heifer Ethel 2d (only remotely connected with any of the above families), in her two-year old form, has an unequaled record of thirty pounds and fifteen ounces in seven days. Of the Stoke-Pogis-Victor Hugos we have Mary Ann, of St. Lambert, thirty-six pounds. Ida, of St. Lambert, thirty pounds, and twentyfive other sisters with an average weekly butter record of over twenty pounds apiece. Such a family of butter-cows was never found in any other breed.

We do not refer to these as economical producers, but only to show the tremendous digestive powers of a well developed Jersey cow.

Our friends of the Blacks and Whites have boasted loudly that their favorites have carried off many of the prizes at the public butter tests. This is true, simply because our breeders do not care to expose their great cows on the crowded fair grounds when there is nothing for them to gain. Nothing to gain, for the simple reason that we have always held, and still hold, the championship in the great public butter tests of the world.

Oakland's Cora 2d (22362), a grand inbred Albert 44 Welcome cow, tested at the Provincial Exhibition, Ontario, in the fall of 1886, at the public butter test, three pounds, 11 ounces in one day. No cow outside of the Jersey family, at a public test, has ever borne a comparison to this.

Baron's Progress, the champion Jersey cow of England, made, in a public test at the British Dairymen's Association, held at London in November, 1889, three pounds and five ounces of butter. This, too, is above any public test ever made by our German neighbors. So you see, we are merely "resting on our laurels," waiting for something "to turn up" on the fair-grounds worthy of our attention.

While this friendly rivalry may do its part toward stimulating dairymen to breed better stock, yet in deciding the relative merits of good butter-cows, it is very unreliable, for many of our best cows at home we find nearly a failure when surrounded by the throng and excitement of the fair-grounds.

The true merits of the great butter-cow are found where large production is coupled with economy in consumption and minimum expense.

I have already endeavered to show the great capabilities of the little Jersey, so far as large production bears its part, and now it is my purpose to consider some of the advantages the breed holds in the line of economy and minimum expense.

The ordinary size of a Jersey cow is from 800 to 900 pounds. Her small size and contented disposition call for less expense in fencing, less stable-room, less mowroom, smaller ice houses and smaller creameries. Smaller creameries, because the butter fat is floated in but half the amount of water, and less ice because the butter will stand alone in hot weather.

The small expense of producing a Jersey cow should be considered. Hay, pasture and meal enough to produce the 600 pound two-year-old heifer, after which she pays her own way and returns a dividend to her owner. But bear in mind we have only invested in her feed enough to produce 300 pounds of dressed beef. This is the cash price of a butter-machine that will out last your mower, or binder or

thresher, and when it is worn out it will have daughters and grand-daughters enough to supply all our neighbors with butter-machines, still of the most approved type.

I invested in two of those machines nine years ago that are still doing good service in my herd, and have ten daughters and ten grand-daughters, making in all a herd of twenty-two.

The great endurance of the Jersey cow is truly wonderful and enters largely into the economy of using this breed. Chansoetea is sixteen years old and has had fourteen calves. Lou Lou, 3156, is twenty years old and has had seventeen calves. Mrs. Kate M. Buswick's old cow, Christie, she informs us, is sixteen years old and is still capable of making sixteen pounds of butter a week. Duchess of Argyle is nineteen years old and is still mistress of the herd. Caroline 2d, 2019, is twenty-one years old and has had nineteen calves. The noted cow, Lanciers Fancy, made her great record of 936 pounds when she was twelve years old, and died at the advanced age of seventeen years after that many years of almost constant work. Celest of St. Mary's, 8696, is just fresh at the advanced age of twenty years. Daisy, the famous Paran Stephens cow, died at the age of twenty-nine years. The old cow, Masenna, with the reputed record of nearly 900 pounds of butter in a year, has just completed a test of 416 pounds of butter in six months at the mature age of sixteen years.

What a great misfortune it would have been had these cows been twice as large. The original investment of food to produce them would have been twice what it is. Then, when we consider the corn and oats and hay necessary to sustain and keep the double sized body warm for all these years, would it not incur a wanton waste to be carefully avoided by every dairyman?

Yes, gentlemen, you who invest in Jersey cows will never have an elephant on your hands. Waste, by using those large cows, is now being forcibly demonstrated by the various experiment stations. Last year, at London, Ontario, a careful test was conducted, including the value of feed consumed, and it was found that Jerseys showed thirty-three per cent. more profit on the amount of food consumed than any other breed. At the Maine station a two-year careful test has just been closed in which two cows, each of Holsteins, Ayrshires and Jerseys were under careful test. Every pound of food was carefully weigbed, and it was found at the close of this exhaustive experiment that each pound of butter produced by the Holsteins cost twenty-seven cents; each pound produced by the Ayrshires cost twenty-six and onehalf cents; each pound produced by the Jersey cost but nineteen and one-half cents. In my own experiments, as already shown in this paper, the cost of a pound of butter in feed and ice was twelve and one-third cents.

So in selecting economical butter-cows we must keep a close eye to the relative size of the animal with the butter she produces in the year.

Now let us examine the powers of the great yearly butter-producers of the past. The most famous of these are Jersey Bell, of Scituate, Eurotas Jersey Queen of Barnet, Mary Ann of St. Lambert, Lanciers Fancy, Euratisama, Bisson's Bell, and Pauline Paul. The last is the only Holstein with a year's record, and I would call your attention to the fact that she is one of the smaller cows of the breed. Her bodily weight is 1,450 pounds, and her year's butter record is 1,154 pounds, and while this leads the records of the Jerseys, her large size compared with her Jersey competitors places her, as an economic butter cow, fifth in the race. When we place her on one end of the scale and her year's butter product on the other we find it will take 300 pounds more butter to tip the beam; or in other words, for every 100 pounds of bodily weight she makes eighty pounds of butter in the year.

Of the Jerseys, Mary Ann of St. Lambert weighed 1,050 pounds and produced 867 pounds of butter; 197 pounds less than her own weight, or eighty-two per cent. Bisson's Bell weighs about 1,100 pounds and produced 1,028 pounds of butter in a year, lacking but seventy pounds of producing her own weight in butter, or 91 per The old Jersey cow, Lanciers Fancy, at the age of twelve years, produced 936 pounds of butter, an amount equal to her own bodily weight, all in twelve months. Was this achievement not enough to satisfy the most exacting breeder? But there was still more in store for us.

cent.

The little Jersey pet, Eurotisama, the smallest cow ever tested for a year, with a weight of but 820 pound, produced 945 pounds of butter, 125 pounds more than the weight of her own body, or 112 pounds of butter to every 100 pounds of cow. Twelve per cent. in advance of her closest Jersey competitor, and distancing her Holstein cousin by thirty-two per cent., she stands to-day the queen of the dairy world.

While we do not deny but what there is occasionally a fine butter cow in other breeds, and may carry off a prize now and then, as they did at the great New York dairy show, yet while the other breeds carried off but a single first prize, the Jerseys carried off five first prizes out of the six. In this contest of breeds there were 161 entries of choice butter coming from many different states.

That the product of the Channels Islands cattle is in greater demand than that of any other breed we will not attempt further to prove, as it is self-evident and fully sustained at the bar of public opinion.

You will notice the milkman sells nothing but pure Jersey milk. The middleman's butter is always fresh from some Jersey creamery, and the rest of the dairy world paint their product to imitate the genuine Jersey goods. Even the manufacturer of patent milk-cans attempts to curry public favor by offering his goods as the Jersey milk-can, and a man out in Iowa advertises the Jersey butter-tub, and so it goes, all attempting to yoke their wares in some way with that already fully in favor with a critical public.

DEHORNING CATTLE.

READ BY H. SAMPSON, VAN WERT, O.

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The subject you have assigned me, "Dehorning Cattle," is a new one, in practice, if not in theory, in this county. It is a question that we as farmers must look at from the standpoint of profit or loss. Whether we dehorn our animals or leave them as nature has provided, we have all come short of the truth with respect to horns. We have been wont to suppose that what is, is right in this regard as in other matters. We see cattle with excrescent appendages, and we jump at once to the conclusion that being thus, they are thus for a purpose, a wise purpose; that in the natural economy of brute dispensation, horns are a necessity, and when their injuries and their damages force our unwilling minds to a different conclusion, we shut off all discussion by this grand clincher. Horns are a necessary evil. We have determined long since that in a domesticated state cattle do not need horns. There are now no wolves or other savage beasts, whose ravenous appetites are likely to decimate our herds, nor are our fenced farms, nor our inclosed sheds or barns, or our narrow yards at all calculated to inspire a love for the close proximity to these useless protuberances, and we come to denounce them as a nuisance, a dangerous weapon in the control of unthinking brute force, dangerous to man and beast alike, destroying life to hundreds of the human family, and to thousands of their own kind, to say nothing of innumerable horses, hogs and sheep. The more the losses we sustain among our domesticated animals are investigated, the proportionate share is chargeable upon horns. It is the well-drawn conclusion of able statiscians that in these United States alone not less than two hundred persons annually meet death by these cruel appendages.

Now I wish to quote from Mr. H. H. Haff, of Illinois, the originator of dehorning cattle in the west. He says the horn is composed of three parts: First, the bony horny within; second, the periosteum around it; third, the shell over all. On the calf the embryo horn is a mere button of cartilage. It is without direct blood circulation, and is comparatively without feeling, and is all cartilage At, say four months of age, this cartilage begins to connect with the skull bone, and as the frontal bone forms, this assumes shape as a protuberance or excrescence, and becomes vascular, that is, forms and grows harder, while a corresponding growth of skin (without hair) becomes its cover or shell. At its base, and just under the first hair, is a small ring of flesh, called the matrix or mother of the future horn.

Now, until the animal attains the age of three years, the growth seems to be general through all the parts alike. But at three, the growth partially ceases and seems thereafter to be confined to the base that is at the matrix, and hence each year a ring is thrown off or formed, which makes from thence the annual growth. Now, if asserted there is little life and no feeling in either the shell or the bony horn, it follows as a matter of course that there is but a small part to be affected in dehorning, because all the pain produced is caused by cutting off this periosteum. This would amount to no more than a out of the same length upon the body, in fact not so much, because there is less nerves here than at the surface of the skin. It is usual to compare dehorning to branding and other necessary operations. In branding you inflict great pain, because the skin is made up of nerves, so to speak, while in dehorning none of these conditions exist. Were the horns the seat of a great nerve center, they would cease to be adapted either to attack or defense.

Now, to sum up the advantages to be achieved, I may say: First, dehorning cattle would insure a lease of life to at least two hundred people annually in the United S ates; second, dehorning cattle saves us ten thousand colts and innumerable cattle, hogs and sheep.

Dehorning cattle saves at least one-half of shed-room, and better still is the fact that the shed may be made tight all around, save a few openings on the south side.

Again, cattle feed better, are more quiet, fatten better and ship better, as any one can see, as dehorned cattle are shipped through this town nearly every day from the west. It seems that taking the horns off a full-grown animal takes the boss feeling away from him, and he is willing to divide his room with his master. Now, how is the operation of dehorning performed? Mr. Haff says, put the animal into the stanchion, use a rope with an iron ring in one end; make a double loop, throw the ring end over the neck, the other around the nose; raise the head and draw the rope over the top of stanchion; draw the head up tight and secure and cut off one horn, then the head secure as before and cut off the other horn. Turn loose at once, putting nothing on. What, nothing? No, nothing. All applications are useless. They are irritants. Keep your salve for your feelings; the horns do not need it. Use a small, short, sharp, neat saw. Dehorn at any time of year except fly-time.

Now, I have given above Mr. Haff's method of taking off horns, but if any of you brother farmers have objections to taking them off in that way, I will now give you a receipt for taking off the horns when they are calves, which will neither hurt your conscience nor cost you more than two cents to the calf. Put on one application of crude potash while the calf is young, and I can assure you the problem of whether you will dehorn your cattle from this time on will be solved.

Now, what are the objections? Positively none, that I know of to the animal. Will cattle grow as large if they are dehorned? Cattle will not look as large, but at the scales they will more than hold their own, because they become so quiet,

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