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 The cow:dairy husbandry and cattle breed 
 
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S IXTON'S RURAL HAND-BOOK«. 
 
 PIIICK T\VK\t\-FIVK <K.\TS. 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 
 
 THE 
 
 BosmeK p. bonier Cibrdvg 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 ROSWELL R FLOWER 
 
 FOR THE USE OF 
 
 THE N. Y. STATE VETERINARY COLLEGE. 
 
 1897 
 
 THE DR. JOHN BUSTEED COLLECTION. 
 
(A: 
 
 ""k 
 
 THE COW:\^. r // 
 
 DAIRY HUSBANDRY AND CATTLE BREEDING. 
 
 BY M. M. MILBUEN, 
 
 Author of Prize Essays of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 
 
 EDITED BY AMBROSE STEVENS, 
 Editor of Youatt & Martin on Cattle. 
 
 WITH ILLTJSTEATIONS ON 'WOOD. 
 
 NEW YOKE: 
 C. M. SAXTON, 
 
 AGRICULTURAL BOOK PUBLISHER. 
 1852. 
 

 -^c^r^^^mf^e 
 
 Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1852, by 
 
 C. M. SAXTON, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 
 District of New York. 
 
 Nft Y f -^' 
 
 S. W. BENEDICT, 
 Sterfotypeb and Printer, 
 16 Spruce street, N. Y. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The American Publisher placed this little book in the hands of the editor to be 
 Americanized. Mr. Milburn, its author, is a resident of Yorkshire, England, a county 
 whose cattle are almost wholly of the short horn kind. "While he does ample justice 
 to the favorite breed of his own region, he much underrates the Devons and Herefords. 
 It is unfortunately the case that in England the breeders of particular races of animals 
 admit little or no merit in other varieties. Due allowance must be made for the 
 author's position in a short horn cattle region, and his consequent partialities. 
 
 Cattle, milk, butter, and cheese making are the same essentially in all countries. 
 Yariations of climate and soil make different breeds of beasts preferable in different 
 regions ; and the same causes act to somewhat change the processes of producing 
 butter and cheese. Yet a good treatise on these subjects will suit all countries and all 
 varieties of breeds. 
 
 This little book contains much valuable matter, in a compact form and at a low 
 price, that is nowhere else so accessible and so reasonable. The American editor has 
 adapted it to the American farmer and breeder, preserving the views and opinions of 
 the author, correcting obvious errors in fact, and rendering this edition of more value 
 to the American reader than the English one. i' 
 
 In America it has been found, that the Devons, while suited to all latitudes, are 
 better fitted for the climate of the extreme south and the extreme north than any 
 other breed of cattle. In Georgia and Canada, they are superior to all others either 
 for milk or feeding. In a few years all New England will be occupied with this breed, 
 as the one best adapted to its pastures and its climate. 
 
 The short horn and the Aldemey are by experience shown to be adapted only to-the 
 more temperate portions of our country. Within this range the short horn has no 
 equal as a whole, for beef and milk. 
 
 The American breeder and dairyman should therefore choose his breed in reference 
 to his locality. In doing this he should confine himself to the short horn and Devon 
 races, when he designs to breed with a view to both beef and milk. In merely graz- 
 ing regions, where the dairy forms no object, he may select also the Herefords as a 
 good beef and feeding race, and adapted to all regions whose pasture and climate suit 
 the short horn. So far as experiments have been tried, the Ayrshire breed may be 
 said, in general, to have failed, and should therefore be avoided. The Alderney is only 
 to be commended to the amateur or those keeping a single cow j she gives a small 
 quantity of very rich milk, that furnishes a great luxury in its cream and butter ; but 
 while these are rich, they are too small in quantity, and the milk is very defective in 
 its cheese making property. v 
 
 The American breeder will thus see the propriety of being guided by^M experi- 
 ence of those who have tested in their own climate and on their own soils, the different 
 breeds, and shown those which arc best fitted for both. 
 
 AMBROSE STEVENS. 
 
PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The Publisher, having found the want of small, cheap Books, of 
 acknowledged merit, on the great topics of farming economy, and 
 meeting for those of such a class a constant demand, offers, in his 
 Rural Handbooks, of which this is one, works calculated to fill the 
 void. 
 
 He trusts that a discerning Public wiU both buy and read these 
 little Treatises, so admirably adapted to all classes, and fitted by 
 their size for the pocket, and thus readable at the fireside, on the 
 road, and in short everywhere. 
 
 C. M. SAXTON, 
 
 Agrmiltural Book Publisher. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Adepert's and Dischoff's methods of pre- 
 serving milk, 66. 
 
 Alderney breed, 19; its qualities, 20; crite- 
 rions of the improved Alderney cow, 21 ; 
 produce of, 20; comparison between the 
 Kerry and Alderney breeds, 20. 
 
 Angus breed, the, 39. 
 
 Arable land, how best managed for cot- 
 tager cow-keepers, 84. 
 
 Ayrshire breed, the, 17; Aiton'3 descrip- 
 tion of, 17; produce of, 17; their power 
 to give milk to a very late period, 18. 
 
 Bison, or wild ox, supposed original of 
 our domestic breed, 10; habits in its na- 
 tive haunts, 10. 
 
 Buffalo, the, used for domestic purposes 
 in the East and in Africa, 10. 
 t Butter, instructions for making, 52; useful 
 points to be noted, 53; how to preserve, 
 54; cure of rancid, 55j mode of preserv- 
 ing in Holstein, 55. 
 
 Bretagne butter, its mode of manufacture, 
 54. 
 
 Calves, rearing, 38; materials of food, 91. 
 
 Cattle, their importance to man, 9; their 
 introduction into Britain, 10; specula- 
 tions on the origin of, 12, 13; estimated 
 number and value of in the United King- 
 dom, 13; trade in London, 13; classifica- 
 tion of, 13; divided into fat-producing 
 and milk-producing, 14; observations on 
 their form as influencing their quali- 
 ties, 27. 
 
 Cattle-feeding, principles of, 94; very va- 
 rious modes adopted by different cattle- 
 breeders, 95, 96; the food, 97, 98; its 
 preparation, 97; "Mr. Warnes' plan, 97; 
 Mr. Marshall's, 101; management of, by 
 the cottager and amateur, 89, 90. 
 
 Cheese, Dunlop, 70; Cheshire, 72; double 
 Gloucester, 74; York cream, 77; Ched- 
 dar, 90. 
 
 Cheese-making, 56; inoculation, 59. 
 
 Cheshire breed, the, 25. 
 
 Chillingham, wild cattle at, 11; habits of, 
 
 11, 44. 
 Chums, forms in use, 55; the barrel, 56. 
 Churning, Professor Trail's experiments, 
 
 53. 
 Ceilings' celebrated bull Hubback, 41; his 
 
 notion of crossing, 44. 
 Cottagers and amateurs, system for, 86. 
 Cowhouse for the cottager or amateur, 
 
 87. 
 Cream, how obtained, 50; qualities of, 51. 
 Cross-breeding, 45; instances of, in diifer- 
 
 ent animals, 45. 
 
 Dairy, management of, 48; arrangement of 
 the, 69. 
 
 Dairy cows, management of, 84. 
 
 Dairy system of London and other great 
 towns, 60; mode of keeping the cows, 
 61; in Liverpool, 63; in Ayrshire, 70; in 
 Devonshire, 75; in Italy, 79; in Switzer- 
 land, 79; in Holstein, 80. 
 
 Devon breed, the, 37; their form and habit, 
 37; their weight, 37. 
 
 Diseases of cattle, 102; their remedies, 103, 
 109. 
 
 Dorsetshire breed, the, 25. 
 
 Fat-producing breeds of cattle, 28; objec- 
 tions to fattening considered, 28; how to 
 detect the qualities, 29; ordinary indica- 
 tions of, 30. 
 
 Fattening animals, rules for, 29. 
 
 Gloucestershire breed, the, 24; their origiu 
 and qualities, 24. 
 
 Grass lands, how best managed by cot- 
 tagers and amateurs, 84. 
 
 Guenon's mode of ascertaining the capa- 
 bilities of milk-producing cattle, 15. 
 
 Hereford breed, the, -33; deficient in fatten- 
 ing qualities, 34. 
 
 Highland Scot, 35; its peculiarities, 36; 
 account of one fed by the Duke of 
 Northumberland, 35. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Kerry breed, the, 26; their useful quali- 
 ties, 26. 
 
 Leicestershire, breed, the 24; their cheese- 
 producing powers, 25. 
 
 Linseed for cattle, Mr. Thompson's pre- 
 paration of, 102. 
 
 London, cattle trade in, 13 
 
 Milk-producing breeds of cattle, 13; how 
 to detect their capabilities, 14; the best 
 settled marks or characteristics, 16. 
 
 Milk, chemical constituents of, 48; changes 
 which it undergoes, 49; varying proper- 
 ties of, 49; of diflFerent animals, compari- 
 son table, 60; adulterations of, 65; pres- 
 ervation of, 65; eflect of railways on 
 London milk, 60. 
 
 Milking, operation of, 66; artificial mode, 
 
 Principles of cattle breeding, 40; their ap- 
 plication, 40; breeding in and in, 43; 
 
 crossing, 44. 
 
 Qualities of cattle for the dairy and the 
 butcher different, 39; conformations and 
 qualities are co-existent, 39. 
 
 Saw-dust, value of, as a litter, 102. 
 Scottish Kyloe beed, 27; description of, 27; 
 
 hardihood, 27: produce, 27. 
 Short-horn or Durham breed, 31; theiif 
 
 supposed origin, 31; their qualities, 31; 
 
 Mr. Dickson's description of, 31; weight, 
 
 32; the large profits they realize 33. 
 Sexes of animals, 47; how controlled, 47. 
 
 Yorkshire cow, the, 21; description of, 22; 
 selected mostly by dairymen of London 
 and other large towns, 23; produce of, 23. 
 
DAIRY HUSBANDRY AND CATTLE FEEDING. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTKODTTOTION. 
 
 There is not a race of animals to which the community is on the whole 
 more indebted, than to cattle. They not only cultivate the land, but afford 
 food of various kinds, in different circumstances of their existence ; and also 
 at death, supply very important articles of clothing and utility, and are 
 amonst those animals to which we owe by far the most of-the comforts and 
 conveniences of life. 
 
 Not to mention the use of cattle in many districts of country for the pur- 
 poses of labor : they supply during life, those most important of necessaries, 
 milk and cream ; they afford the luxuries of cheese and of butter ; and at 
 their death they are the sources of supply of the food which has become as- 
 sociated with our national peculiarities, and which is one of the most nutri- 
 tious of the necessaries of life. 
 
 Nor in death does their utility cease. Their hide provides the protection 
 to our feet and the trappings to our horses — their horns, combs and ornaments 
 — their hoofs even, and their waste, supply glue and gelatine ; while their 
 bones afford the handles for our knives and many useful articles in manufac- 
 ture ; and the refuse again, of these, returns to our soils as a most valuable 
 manure. 
 
 In the very earliest times they seem to have had attached to them a high 
 degree of importance. In very primeval days, in Egypt, then the most civ- 
 ilized country of the earth, divine honors were paid to them, and they had 
 their priests and their obsequies. In ages of more remote antiquity still, 
 they were among the first offered and the first accepted sacrifices; and the 
 herdsman was a patriarchal king, as well as was the shepherd, — ^indeed, 
 riches then consisted in possessing cattle and sheep. 
 
 We have in this country several very distinct tribes of animals— differing 
 in their features and characteristics in many very important particulars ; 
 some so completely domesticated as to be affectionate and even companiona- 
 1* 
 
10 DAIKT HUSBANDRY. 
 
 ble, and others shy and untameahle in their nature, as the wild deer of the 
 forest ; nor is it easy to say whether these latter are an original race, or 
 whether they are an accidental variety, permitted to live in their native 
 wildness as a contrast to the gentle domesticated creatures such as the short- 
 horns, which have been introduced, and which owe their docility to conti- 
 nental training, probably through a long series of years. 
 
 Tracing our domestic breed back to the Bison, or Wild Ox, known to the 
 ancient Greeks and Romans, but driven away from central Europe, we find 
 they now inhabit the wild morasses and forests of Lithuania and Circassia, 
 where they appear so wild and ferocious, as to resemble but little, except by 
 marks too unmistakable to overlook, the quiet and gentle kine, which low 
 around our homes with a social attachment. Attempts made to domesticate 
 these have by no means been successful, and, when partially effected, they 
 seem to have an aversion to our domesticated cattle which is highly indica- 
 tive of their half educated state. The Bison is found also in British India, 
 in Western Asia, and on the American continent ;* the race is hunted in 
 most of these countries for their skins, and now perhaps for their flesh and 
 bones. 
 
 These Bisons are usually very formidable in numbers, associate together 
 for mutual protection, move in rank and file, observing almost military disci- 
 pline, and are led by the largest and fiercest bull. So dense is their column 
 when migrating, that, if one falls or halts, the whole herd will march over 
 him and trample him to death. 
 
 The Buffalo is another species of wild ox, and is also somewhat widely 
 diffused, being common in India, in Africa, and in some of the wilder or 
 more southerly parts of Eiu'ope. It seems more tameable than the Bison, 
 and is used for domestic purposes in the East and in Africa. The native 
 African buffalo affords hunting sport of the wildest kind, and, having also a 
 bull leader, will rush headlong against any opposing enemy. Sometimes 
 life is sacrificed in these exciting but terrible engagements. 
 
 Now, (hough differing in conformation, the wild cattle of this country 
 have many habits in common with both these animals. They are kept in 
 their native purity in the park of Lord Tankerville, at Chillingham in 
 Northumberland ; a few are also kept in Scotland, in a park of the Duke of 
 Hamilton, at Chatelherault, in Lanarkshire, but the latter have a less cer- 
 tain pedigree. The former nobleman, in a communication to the Society of 
 Arts, gives a very interesting account of their characteristics and habits, and 
 assigns to them the palm of being the aboriginal cattle of the island. That 
 the original breed, or at any rate some early breed of cattle, have been very 
 large in size, is pretty evident from the fossil bones found in bogs ; but a 
 smaller kind found in Cornwall also indicates a smaller animal, having a 
 
 » There is no connection between the Ama-iam Bison (Bulfalo) and the Bison of Eu- 
 rope and Asia, nor domestic cattle. — Am. Ed. 
 
INTKODUCTION. H 
 
 kind of horn more resembling the cattle of the Duke of Hamilton. Fitz- 
 stephen, who lived in the twelfth century, alludes to the wild bull of the 
 woods as having its residence in the large forests near London. Guy, Earl 
 of Warwick, whose battle with the wild Dun Cow is commemorated by 
 the animal's skull still preserved in "Warwick Castle, evidently had an en- 
 counter with a large and monstrous animal of the wild breed ; HoUinshed 
 also speaks of Bruce in the fourteenth century being nearly killed by a wild 
 bull in the forest of Caledon. 
 
 So recently as the sixteenth century, it seems these wild cattle were com- 
 mon in the Callender or Calder woods. 
 
 The Chillingham Park Cattle appear to retain all the characteristics of 
 wildness incidental to the untamed denizens of the forest. They hide their 
 young, feed during the night, and conceal themselves as much as possible 
 during the day in the woods, into which they steal away if they appear to 
 be observed. Their usual mode of retreat is to get up slowly, set oiF at first 
 in a walk, then a trot, and they seldom begin to gallop till they have placed 
 a hill or rising ground between themselves and the observer. When they 
 come down into the lower part of the park, which they do at stated hours, 
 they move like a regiment of cavalry in single file, the bulls leading the 
 van, as in retreat it is the bulls that bring up the rear. Another peculiarity 
 is, that when confronted closely they will at first dash off— remove a few 
 hundred yards, and then all turn their faces and approach the object of their 
 fear ; on any further indications of approach, they rush off, but to a smaller 
 distance, and return nearer the object ; and so on every occasion until the 
 cause of the disturbance departs. They do not seem, however, to have any 
 disposition to pursue. Mr. Geo. Cully states a fact, related to him by Mr. 
 Bailey, of Chillingham, which shows the native wildness of these cattle. 
 He found a hidden calf two days old, very lean and feeble, but, on stroking 
 its head, it nevertheless got up, pawed with its feet several times, bellowed 
 out, and made a butt at that gentleman, which he evaded, and it fell to the 
 ground with the effort, but was so weak as to be unable to rise up of itself. 
 The whole herd became alarmed, and came to the rescue in great fury. So 
 ferocious are the mothers when they have calves, that they will gore or de- 
 stroy any one who comes near them. 
 
 It is a peculiarity in the wild cattle also, that when any one of their 
 number seems to be irrecoverably ill, the rest immediately fall upon it, and 
 gore it to death. 
 
 Now whether all the great difference in conformation, color, characteristics, 
 &c., of cattle be due to climate, breeding in and in, pasturage, crossing, &c., 
 there is no doubt that, as far as man is concerned, by far the greatest victo- 
 ry he has won is in the domestication of the lower animals. To convert a 
 wild, almost worthless animal, — except when secured by the efforts of the 
 chase — into a tame, gentle, willing slave, affording diminution of human la- 
 
12 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 bor, and yielding, besides, a supply of convenience, comfort, and luxury to 
 man, is no ordinary conquest ; but to cultivate one variety for the milk, but- 
 ter and cheese, and another for its beef, is a victory of skill and judgment by 
 far surpassing in vponder the mere taming of an animal to domestic habits. 
 
 When we revert back to the origin of the cattle of this country, and ask 
 ourselves if it be possible that the long-homed Craven cow, and the polled 
 Angus — the gentle, quiet short-horn, and the wild and ferocious breed of 
 Chillingham, can be of the same original ; let it "he remembered that the 
 question is one much wider, and by far more extensive ! Is the rough- 
 maned and bristly bison, with his large fore-quarters and his enormous head, 
 of the same original as the neat and sprightly Ayrshire cow ? The question 
 is by far too extensive for discussion here ; but there does not seem any 
 reasonable doubt of the fact, that within certain limits, changes of circum- 
 stances alone will have a great tendency to change the conformations and 
 characteristics of species. Thus, in cold countries whiteness prevails as a 
 color, and fur or wool as a coat. In warmer climates the brown prevails as 
 a color, and the hair as a covering, while in those absolutely hot, the dun 
 seems to obtain as a color, and the down as a clothing ; so great is the adap- 
 tation of organized beings to the state in which they are placed, and so vast 
 is the expansibility of nature, that she can extend, or shorten, or increase, or 
 diminish conformation so as to be suitable to the wants of the animal, and 
 to its happiness, and comfort, and life. 
 
 Thus, though the bones of the Bison and the Galloway may present but 
 small distinction, yet the difference of skin, of mane, and of muscle wouM 
 make an ordinary observer start at the idea that they had a common origin. 
 It is possible that the influence of pasture may lengthen or shorten the horns 
 — that by breeding from long or short-homed, or from hornless animals, the 
 variety may be perpetuated, till they lose, in the course of ages, many of 
 their original characteristics. It is impossible, for instance, in Essex, to 
 grow the ox to the same size, other things being equal, as in the county of 
 Durham ; nor on the Ayrshire Hills can he be produced in the same form or 
 stature as in the Devonshire Valleys. The Highland Scot is suited to the 
 cold climate of the exposed and stormy north, the short-horn to the lowland 
 pastures, and who shall say that the God of Nature has not impressed on 
 these created beings the capability of adapting themselves to his plastic 
 handy-work, of developing their tendency to follow the peculiarities of the 
 situation in which they are placed? 
 
 In all our stocks of domesticated animals we see profuse and infinite va- 
 riety, and in the races of wild animals from which they originally descended, 
 we find a uniform color and figure, for the most part, to prevail. Animals 
 in a wild state procure a simple and unvaried food in precarious and deficient 
 quantities, and are exposed to the inclemencies of the seasons. In the im- 
 proved state, all the stimuli of various food, of warmth, &c., are afforded in 
 
THE MILK-PRODUCING BREEDS OF CATTLE. 13 
 
 abundance, and the consequence is a luxuriant growth and evolution of varie- 
 ties, and the exhibition of all the perfections of which each species is capa- 
 ble. 
 
 The importance of the stock of cattle as affecting the wealth and well- 
 being of this country can hardly be over estimated. Mr. M'Culloch esti- 
 mates the entire number of cattle in the United Kingdom at 5,220,000 ; if 
 we add to this the number imported in 1847 — or 83,000 in round numbers — 
 •we shall have as many as 5,303,000 head of cattle in the United Kingdom 
 in one year, which at so small a price as ^8 each, will give an aggregate 
 value of ^42,424,000. And this number is by no means an extreme one, 
 but quite the reverse. C'olquhoun estimated the cattle in England and 
 Wales alone in 1813, at 5,500,000; and M'Culloch founded his data froir 
 Arthur Young's estimate, made in 1779, and to which he has only added one 
 third. As early maturity, and the extended quantity of food produced bj 
 convertible husbandry and improved farming, are also to be taken into ac 
 count, it is probable that the cattle of the United Kingdom stand nearei 
 seven millions than five, at the present time. 
 
 To give an idea of the increased cattle trade of London, it is only neces 
 sary to mention, that in 1732 there were only 76,210 cattle sold in Smith 
 field; in 1830, a period of 98 years, they had increased to 169,907 head; 
 whereas, in 1846, a period of 16 years more, they reached 210,757 head. II 
 these had but an average weight of 650 lbs., it would give a consumption of 
 the meat slaughtered in London alone of not less than 136,992,050 lbs., not to 
 mention the quantities of meat sent up by the different railways, as carcas 
 ses, and which trade is now becoming a great source of profit in severa 
 parts of the country. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE MILK-PRODUCING BREEDS OF CATTLE. 
 
 It is usual, in works on cattle, to classify them by the length or shortness 
 of their horns ; and, as a matter of natural history, it may be the most cor- 
 rect mode of dividing or classifying the different tribes of animals which 
 prevail in one or other of the districts of Great Britain and Ireland. But 
 for practical purposes, it is by no means either advantageous or convenient. 
 There are certain breeds which have certain peculiar qualities, and as the 
 size of horn has no connection whatever with those qualities, it is by far the 
 most desirable course to classify them according to their properties, rather 
 than by any arbitrary mark of distinction altogether unindicative of their 
 peculiar capabilities. There is, in this country, a great variety of pasturage 
 
14 DAIEY HUSBANDKT. 
 
 — from the very rich to the very poor, and from the extremely warm, to 
 the exposed and stormy, and in every gradation of this range is a class of 
 cattle kept and propagated. 
 
 The great object for vphich cattle are kept by the farmer is either to grow 
 beef for the market, or to produce milk, which shall be converted into but- 
 ter or cheese, or sold as milk, to supply the great towns. Hence the former 
 selects the fat-producing, and the latter the milk-producing, class of animals. 
 Nature, as a general thing, has provided that different races of animals, and 
 different individuals of these races, are, more than others, adapted to the se- 
 cretion of one or the other of these necessary products. The objects of the 
 two .secretions are essentially different, and the tendencies and qualities ne- 
 cessary for both are never active in the same animal at the same time. For 
 while the former is a reservoir of the carbonaceous matter of the food, laid 
 by for subsequent use in the respiratory system, the latter is the secretion of 
 a substance necessary to support the young progeny until it is able to sustain 
 itself, and to procure from the green pastures, the food there provided for it. 
 Hence to produce milk is, more or less, the natural quality of all kinds and 
 races of cattle ; but soine will produce large quantities, but thin and poor in 
 quality ; some smaller quantities, and rich in oily matter ; while others will 
 afford a small quantity, but abundant in solid matter ; and the first class 
 would be selected by the milk-man near the populous city, the second by 
 the dairy-man whose product was intended to be butter, and the third by the 
 maker of cheese. There are some tribes of cattle that are both good fatten- 
 ers and good milkers, but never at the same time. 
 
 The milk-producing breeds are more widely diffused than any other, be- 
 cause they are capable of being kept to advantage on qualities of herbage 
 which are inadequate profitably to sustain the fat-secreting breeds. Grass- 
 land on the clay soils on the sides of the uplands, and even on the poorer 
 sands, is quite adequate to supply the means of making butter or cheese ; 
 but it will very ill repay the person who attempts to feed cattle on herbage 
 so inferior ; while the rich alluvial feeding-pastures which generally skirt 
 the rivers are far more profitably employed in raising summer beef, than in 
 the production of milk, of cheese, or of butter. Some races of long-horns, 
 of short-horns, or middle-horns, or even of polled animals are to be placed 
 amongst the one class we have alluded to, and some amongst the other, eind 
 we prefer arranging the breeds most celebrated for the quantity or quaUty of 
 their milk under the first head, and reserve the second to the races with 
 special aptitude for fattening. 
 
 The question arises very naturally how far it is possible, by external confor- 
 mations of the individual animal, to detect its capabilities for the secretion 
 of milk 1 There are instances in every breed where it is evident nature has 
 been more bountiful, or more niggardly, in bestowing the quaUties calculated 
 to produce the secretion for which the race may be celebrated; and there 
 
THE MILK-PEODtTCING BREEDS OF CATTLE. 
 
 15 
 
 are, doubtless, marks, well known to the dairy-man, which seldom fail to in- 
 dicate the power of the animal in the range of qualities peculiar to his race. 
 On the continent of Europe this has been professed to be carried to a very- 
 minute extent. Francois Guenon, a Frenchman, professed to have found, by 
 close observation, a mode of deciding authoritatively, not only the quantity 
 and quality of milk which would be given by any particular cow, but also 
 the period for which she would retain her milk after calving ; and this he 
 proposed to do by external appearances alone, and these of a somewhat ar- 
 bitrary kind. 
 
 It is not within the compass of this little work to give anything like a 
 description of the mode he adopted, now made public, but the foundation is 
 his classification of all kinds of cattle into eight classes or families ; each 
 family is divided into three sections, according to size only, and each section 
 is again subdivided into eight orders. 
 
 CLASS I. PLANDEINES OF GUENOn's SYSTEM.* 
 
 The distinguishing marks by which he divides these are — 1. The Gravure, 
 commencing at the udder, and extending to the bearing ; 2. The Epis, a soft 
 brush of hair upon the animal ; and 3. Contrepoil, or hair growing the con- 
 trary way. The peculiarities of these marks constitute the distinction be- 
 tween the families and orders. Thus, if the gravure be large, the reservoir 
 
 * The system of Guenon ia very extensive and complicated ; its extent however, he 
 claims, only covers the various gravures, which exist in cows. The variations of the 
 gravure are twenty-four in number ; beside the exceptional ones, denominated bas- 
 tard, which are indicated by particular marks on the gravures, and the cows are 
 distinguished by the earlier period at which they go dry ; more especially if they be 
 
 tot in calf. These gravures are of eight different kinds corresponding to the eight 
 ifferent classes ; and there are eight orders of each class, each numbered one to eigkt. 
 In all the classes, number one is superior, and number eight inferior, and tlie degree 
 of excellence varies with the number, the higher, the less the excellence. The same 
 variation takes place in the orders, the first being better than the eighth. But the su- 
 perior orders of the different classes are better milkers than the injferior orders in the 
 superior classes. — Am. Ed. 
 
16 DAIRY HUSBANDET. 
 
 of milk will be large, and the produce abundant; if it be formed of fine hair, 
 if the skin be yellowish, and if a kind of bran powder comes off the skin be 
 of that color, they are all signs of a good milker. The rationale of this is, 
 that this gravure is but a continuation of, and corresponds with, the lactifer- 
 ous vessels under the belly of the animal. These " epis," he states, corre- 
 spond with the reservoir of milk, and aie tufts of hair growing the wrong 
 way on the right or left of the bearing. The largest epis indicates the most 
 rapid loss of milk. The contrepoil, or hair growing the wrong way on the 
 gravure, amidst that which grows upwards, shows a default in the produc- 
 tion of milk, even if the gravure be large. We give a fac-simile of his 
 class 1. Flandbines. So far is a very general description of a system 
 which he invests with minutias of no ordinary kind, and it is so precise and 
 prolix that it requires a series of some score of plates to show the variations 
 of family, class, and order. 
 
 Without definitively pronouncing that there is no merit in his observations, 
 it seems perfectly clear that many of his indications are of a character gen- 
 erally indicative of quality, but are pushed far beyond their legitimate ob- 
 jects ; for while a wide capacity of upper udder — a fine hair — a yellow scurf, 
 are somewhat too indefinite to classify very precisely, they are just the points 
 which may indicate a fineness of quality, and a large lactiferous capacity, 
 which may add to the physiological signs by which a milking-cow is judged 
 by the practical grazier.* 
 
 Beauty of form is about the last qualification in a good dairy cow. Sym- 
 metry to a breeder is no criterion of milking qualities. The parallelogram 
 is the beau ideal of a fattened ox in section, and a cylinder is that of his su- 
 perficies — thus exhibiting the essence of roundness^ — whereas the very con- 
 verse is the perfection of the milker, i.e. '■'■flatness."^ The following are the 
 best settled marks or characteristics of a milking cow. Head small, and 
 fine, eye bright and full, but with a quiet and placid expression, neck thin and 
 deep, which gives it an appearance of hollowness ; shoulder emd breast nar- 
 row, but projecting ; ribs flat ; rumps broad, and tapering down to the knee 
 joint, owing to the thighs being thin ; tail small ; udder large and round, 
 with teats well formed, tapering to the end, and at a moderate distance from 
 each other ; thin in its skin, and with plenty of skin above ; its fore-teats 
 round and full, and with a large subcutaneous, or milk-vein. There must, 
 above all, be kindliness of touch, indicative at once of good breeding, and of 
 quiet disposition. This, with a quiet, calm, serene temper, are indications 
 of milk-producing animals, which, where health is present, are almost infal- 
 lible criterions. 
 
 * Guenon's system has been much spread and tried in America, and has progressive- 
 ly obtained credit and reliance from dairy-men and breeders. His work translated 
 into English, may be had of C. M. Saxton. — Am. Ed. ' 
 
 t A cow of a good fatting tribe, wliioh is a good milker, will show thin and flat in 
 milking, but when dry and fed up will show full and round. ^Am. Ed. 
 
THE AYRSHIRE BREED, lY 
 
 The next step is to describe some of the most prominent features of the 
 best kind of cattle for milk producing, and but a few of the best will be 
 selected of the many varieties of cattle. 
 
 THE AYRSHIRE BREED. 
 
 These are a valuable breed of middle-horned cattle, exceeding, perhaps, 
 all in all, any breed of dairy cows in the kingdom. Small in size — their 
 want of symmetry is not so obvious — affording milk of a very rich quality, 
 and somewhat oily ; they also fatten tolerably, for when the butyraceous 
 deposit is stopped by drying, the system soon accustoms itself to secrete 
 fat, which they soon acquire on a pasture of inferior quality to that required 
 by more tender animals. 
 
 There is no description of the race equal to that of Mr. Alton, whose 
 work on Dairy £[usbandry so far exceeds any other, that it is abundantly 
 quoted to the present day. " Head small, but rather long and narrow at 
 the muzzle ; the eye small, but smart and lively ; the horns small, clear, 
 crooked, and, at their roots, placed at a considerable distance from each 
 other ; neck long and slender, tapering towards the head with no loose skin 
 below ; shoulders thin ; fore-quarters light ; hind-quarters large ; back 
 straight, broad behind ; the joints rather loose and open ; carcass deep, and 
 pelvis capacious, and wide over the hips, with round fleshy buttocks ; tail 
 long and smaU ; legs small and short, with firm joints ; udder capacious, 
 broad, and square, stretching forward, neither fleshy, low hung, nor loose ; 
 the milk veins large and prominent ; teats short, all pointing outwards, and 
 at a considerable distance from each other ; skin thin and soft ; hair soft 
 and woolly. The head, bones, horns, and all parts of least value small, and 
 the general figure compact and well proportioned." Such was Mr. Alton's 
 description, and with the exception of thickness of buttock, it will not 
 inappropriately describe the present Ayrshire cow. There are two other cha- 
 racteristics which seem so thoroughly belonging to this breed, as such, that 
 they ought not to be passed over. The one is the black muzzle, and the 
 other is the red, which seems to be the natural color of the race, arranged 
 not in considerable quantities, but in blots or patches, and so the animals 
 generally present a sort of checked aspect of pale red, and red and white. 
 
 The produce of these cows in milk and butter is very great. An Ayrshire 
 cow will give from 600 to 800 gallons of milk in the course of the year, and 
 as much as five gallons per day is by no means uncommon for three months 
 after calving. This, however, falls from Colonel Fullarton's estimate, in his 
 Agriculture of Ayrshire, when he states that though the Ayrshire cow will 
 not, when fat, weigh more than twenty to forty English stones, " it is not 
 ■uncommon for these small cows to give from twenty-four to thirty-four 
 English quarts of milk daily during the summer months, while some of 
 them will give as far as forty quarts." 
 
 This milk is also very productive of butter. Three gallons and a half of 
 
16 DAIET HUSBANDRY. 
 
 of milk will be large, and the produce abundant ; if it be formed of fine hair, 
 if the skin be yellowish, and if a kind of bran powder comes oif the skin be 
 of that color, they are all signs of a good milker. The rationale of this is, 
 that this gravure is but a continuation of, and corresponds with, the lactifer- 
 ous vessels under the belly of the animal. These " epis,'' he states, corre- 
 spond with the reservoir of milk, and are tufts of hair growing the wrong 
 way on the right or left of the bearing. The largest epis indicates the most 
 rapid loss of milk. The contrepoil, or hair growing the wrong way on the 
 gravure, amidst that which grows upwards, shows a default in the produc- 
 tion of milk, even if the gravure be large. We give a fac-simile of his 
 class 1. Flahdrihes. So far is a very general description of a system 
 which he invests with minutiae of no ordinary kind, and it is so precise and 
 prolix that it requires a series of some score of plates to show the variations 
 of family, class, and order. 
 
 Without definitively pronouncing that there is no merit in his observations, 
 it seems perfectly clear that many of his indications are of a character gen- 
 erally indicative of quality, but are pushed far beyond their legitimate ob- 
 jects ; for while a wide capacity of upper udder — a fine hair — a yellow scurf, 
 are somewhat too indefinite to classify very precisely, they are just the points 
 which may indicate a fineness of quality, and a large lactiferous capacity, 
 which may add to the physiological signs by which a milking-cow is judged 
 by the practical grazier.* 
 
 Beauty of form is about the last qualification in a good dairy cow. Sjrm- 
 metry to a breeder is no criterion of milking qualities. The parallelogram 
 is the beau ideal of a fattened ox in section, and a cylinder is that of his su- 
 perficies — thus exhibiting the essence of roundness^ — whereas the very con- 
 verse is the perfection of the milker, i.e. "flatness."-^ The following are the 
 best settled marks or characteristics of a milking cow. Head small, and 
 fine, eye bright and full, but with a quiet and placid expression, neck thin and 
 deep, which gives it an appearance of hollowness ; shoulder and breast nar- 
 row, but projecting ; ribs flat ; rumps broad, and tapering down to the knee 
 joint, owing to the thighs being thin ; tail small ; udder large and round, 
 with teats well formed, tapering to the end, and at a moderate distance from 
 each other ; thin in its skin, and with plenty of skin above ; its fore-teats 
 round and full, and with a large subcutaneous, or milk-vein. There must, 
 above all, be kindliness of touch, indicative at once of good breeding, and of 
 quiet disposition. This, with a quiet, calm, serene temper, are indications 
 of milk-producing animals, which, where health is present, are almost infal- 
 lible criterions. 
 
 * Guenon's system has been much Epread and tried in America, and has progressive- 
 ly obtained credit and reliance from dairy-men and breeders. His work, translated 
 into English, may be had of C. M. Saxton. — Am. Ed. 
 
 t A cow of a good fatting tribe, which is a good milker, will show thin and flat in 
 milking, but when dry and fed up will show full and round.— Am. Ed. 
 
THE AYRSHIRE BREED, lY 
 
 The next step is to describe some of the most prominent features of the 
 best kind of cattle for milk producing, and hut a few of the best will be 
 selected of the many varieties of cattle. 
 
 THE AYKSHISE BREED. 
 
 These are a valuable breed of middle-horned cattle, exceeding, perhaps, 
 all in all, any breed of dairy cows in the kingdom. Small in size — their 
 want of symmetry is not so obvious — affording milk of a very rich quality, 
 and somewhat oily j they also fatten tolerably, for when the butyraceous 
 deposit is stopped by drying, the system soon accustoms itself to secrete 
 fat, which they soon acquire on a pasture of inferior quality to that required 
 by more tender animals. 
 
 There is no description of the race equal to that of Mr. Alton, whose 
 work on Dairy Husbandry so far exceeds any other, that it is abundantly 
 quoted to the present day. " Head small, but rather long and narrow at 
 the muzzle ; the eye small, but smart and lively ; the horns small, clear, 
 crooked, smd, at their roots, placed at a considerable distance from each 
 other ; neck long and slender, tapering towards the head with no loose skin 
 below ; shoulders thin ; fore-quarters light ; hind-quarters large ; back 
 straight, broad behind ; the joints rather loose and open ; carcass deep, and 
 pelvis capacious, and wide over the hips, with round fleshy buttocks ; tail 
 long and small ; legs small and short, with firm joints ; udder capacious, 
 broad, and square, stretching forward, neither fleshy, low hung, nor loose ; 
 the milk veins large and prominent ; teats short, all pointing outwards, and 
 at a considerable distance from each other ; skin thin and soft ; hair soft 
 and woolly. The head, bones, horns, and all parts of least value small, and 
 the general figure compact and well proportioned." Such was Mr. Alton's 
 description, and with the exception of thickness of buttock, it will not 
 inappropriately describe the present Ayrshire cow. There are two other cha- 
 racteristics which seem so thoroughly belonging to this breed, as such, that 
 they ought not to be passed over. The one is the black muzzle, and the 
 other is the red, which seems to he the natural color of the race, arranged 
 not in considerable quantities, but in blots or patches, and so the animals 
 generally present a sort of checked aspect of pale red, and red and white. 
 
 The produce of these cows in milk and butter is very great. An Ayrshire 
 cow will give from 600 to 800 gallons of milk in the course of the year, and 
 as much as five gallons per day is by no means uncommon for three months 
 after calving. This, however, falls from Colonel FuUarton's estimate, in his 
 Agriculture of Ayrshire, when he states that though the Ayrshire cow will 
 not, when fat, weigh more than twenty to forty English stones, "it is not 
 •uncommon for these small cows to give from twenty-four to thirty-four 
 English quarts of milk daily during the, summer months, while some of 
 them will give as far as forty quarts." 
 
 This milk is also very productive of butter. Three gallons and a half of 
 
18 
 
 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 such milk will yield a pound and a half of butter ; so that as much as 260 
 Ihs. of butter will be yielded by an Ayrshire cow ; and it is no uncommon 
 thing to have eight or nine pounds of butter produced from one of these 
 cows for some weeks after calving. Some twenty-six gallons of milk 
 will afford fourteen pounds of cheese, or a good cow will yield some thirty- 
 five stone of cheese per annum, which taken at 10s. per stone will produce 
 in this article alone as much as £18 per annum. 
 
 It has been questioned whether the rich districts of Ayrshire ought to be 
 occupied with this breed of cattle. They are said to be more suitable for 
 cottiers than for graziers, and that the latter ought to direct their attention to 
 feeding the short- horn, while the former should combine dairy-farming only, 
 with the occupation of a laborer. To this it may be answered that with 
 the cold rains so prevalent in that county it is pretty certain that the second- 
 
 THE ATBSHIEE COW. 
 
 rate pasturage of much of the grass land is more suitable for the dairy cow, 
 than for fattening the short-horn. 
 
 Nor have the improvements in the breed of AjTshire cattle increased 
 their milking qualities. To breed what would sell in England, and what 
 would feed as steers, has been too much an object ; and as the larger breed 
 of Ayrshire cattle are more profitable for the market, and the smaller for 
 the dairy, the former have been somewhat more encouraged. 
 
 There is another peculiarity of the Ayrshire cows which is deservin" of 
 notice. They hold to their milk to a very late period. They are cultivated 
 
THE ALDBRNEY BREED. 
 
 19 
 
 and educated to give milk. Nature would teach an animal to give a supply 
 as long as its calf needed that nutritious assistance ; but so far have the 
 milking qualities of the Ayrshire covp been brought out, that in some instan- 
 ces they have been known to yield milk all the year round, and to retain it 
 up to an advanced age, though they are generally removed at four or five 
 years old.* 
 
 THE ALDEBNEY BREED. 
 
 Common consent has given the name of Alderney to the Channel Island 
 breed of cattle, so long celebrated for the quantity of milk they gave in pro- 
 portion to their size ; but above all, for the extraordinary richness of its 
 quality. But there is every probability that these cattle were originally a 
 Norman breed, imported and improved in Jersey, and then sent to Alderney ; 
 and thus a common stock, famous far indeed beyond the milk-cows of 
 Normandy, have been produced, which are considered so valuable in this 
 country, as to produce prices varying from £20 to £30. 
 
 THE ALDEENEY COW. 
 
 *A8 a whole the Ayrshires have failed in America. Here the summers are dry and 
 not, and the winters cold and frozen. In Ayrshire the summers are moist and cool, 
 find the winters mild and rainy. The Ayrshire cow does not endure heat or extremes. 
 Am. Ed. 
 
20 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 The produce of these small animals, both in milk and butter, is very great, 
 and may be taken, in fair specimens, at twelve quarts of milk daily, and 
 ten pounds of butter in the vi^eek, during the months of April, May, June, 
 July, and August ; and instances are recorded of cows givmg twenty quarts 
 of milk in the twenty-four hours, and yielding as much as fourteen pounds 
 of butter per week I From this it is clear that the cream is of very rich 
 quality ; the milk is itself superior to much of the town-made cream — the 
 cream almost resembles cream cheese. It is considered too rich by many 
 persons for making cheese ; but instances are recorded of successful cheese- 
 making from this milk. M. Le Feuvre, of La Hogue, succeeded in making 
 cheese of a very superior quality from this fine milk, equal indeed to double 
 Gloucester. Fourteen quarts of milk would give a pound and a half of 
 cheese ; and the whey or drainings of twenty pounds of this cheese would 
 produce four pounds of butter. Compared with the milk of any other cows 
 celebrated for dairy purposes, that of the Aldemey is very superior. An 
 experiment was made, in the months of May, June, July, and August, 
 between eight Aldemey and eight Kerry cows. In the first month, the 
 Alderneys gave 25 per cent of cream against 10 per cent of the Kerrys ; in 
 June, 20 per cent, against 10 ; in July, 23 per cent, eigeunst 10 ; and in 
 August, 16 per cent, against 13; giving an average of some hundred per 
 cent, more cream than the Kerrys — a race of cows somewhat celebrated for 
 dairy qualities. 
 
 But more : three pints of cream from the Alderneys produced 1 lb. 8 J oz. 
 of butter ; from the Kerrys, 1 lb. 4J oz. And this was taken in the month 
 of August, when it will be seen the milk of the Alderneys was somewhat 
 falling off. The experiment was made by Mr. White, on the farm of the 
 Hon. R. Clive of Oakley Park, and deserves every credit, as it seems to 
 have been carefully and intelligently made. 
 
 We are indebted to Colonel le Couteur for almost aU we know of this 
 breed of cattle. In many respects she resembles the Ajrrshire cow ; and, 
 indeed, so close is the resemblance, that Mr. Quayle, in his " Agricultural 
 Survey of Jersey," communicated to the Board of Agriculture, states that 
 " the Ayrshire was a cross between the short-horned breed and the 
 Aldemey." 
 
 As the qualities of the Aldemey breed of cattle are exclusively milk-pro- 
 ducing, we expect to find anything but beauty of form ; and, indeed, until 
 within the last twenty years, a more rude misshapen animal it is difficult to 
 conceive. Possessing cattle superior to others for the richness of their milk, 
 a hardihood and endurance extremely great, and being sustained by the infe- 
 rior herbage the island produced, the Channel Islanders were satisfied with 
 their ungainly form. They might be thus described : — Large cheeks, thin 
 hollow neck, hollow back, thin hams, flat sides, long between hio and ribs, 
 crooked legs, high shoulders, drooping rump, tapering chest. 
 
THE TOEKSHmE COW. 21 
 
 The specimens of improved forms of cattle which began to receive the 
 attention of agricultural societies, tended to call attention to the improve- 
 ment of the Alderney breed ; and hence a society sprang up, under the 
 presidency of General Thornton, and by selecting the best specimens, drew 
 up a scale of nine articles, and to each of these attached a number of points 
 — thirty of which were assumed to be perfection in a cow. These are 
 much more definite, and we think practical, than those of Mr. Gudnon ; and 
 we cannot help giving them, because they indicate the proper criterion of 
 the improved Alderney cow. They are for cows and heifers : — 
 
 Points 
 I. Breed, on both parent's sides, reputed for producing rich 
 
 and yellow butter, 4 
 
 II. Head small, fine, and tapering ; eye full and lively ; muz- 
 zle fine, and encircled with white; horns polished, a 
 little crumpled, tipped with black ; ears small, of an 
 orange color vpithin, 8 
 
 III. Back straight, from the withers to the setting on of the 
 
 tail ; chest deep and nearly of a line with the belly, . 4 
 
 IV. Hide thin, movable, but not too loose, well covered with 
 
 fine soft hair, of good color, 2 
 
 V. Barrel hooped and deep, well-ribbed home (having but 
 little space between the ribs and hips) ; tail fine, hang- 
 ing two inches below the hocks, ... 4 
 VI. Fore-legs straight and fine ; thighs full and long, close 
 together vi^hen viewed from behind; hind legs short, 
 and bones rather fine ; hoop small ; hind legs not to cross 
 
 in walking, ' 2 
 
 VII. Udder full, well up behind ; teats large, and squarely 
 placed, being wide apart ; milk veins large and swell- 
 ing, 4 
 
 VIII. Growth, 1 
 
 IX. General appearance, 2 
 
 Perfection for cows and heifers, . . .31 
 The engraving of the perfect Alderney, given, may be taken as a fair 
 specimen not only of the most perfect animal which the above scale aims at 
 indicating, but will also mark the great improvement in the style of this 
 breed of cattle ; and will, so far, incidentally mark the improved character 
 of the other breeds of cattle in the country. 
 
 THE YOKKSHIEE COW. 
 
 Having given instances of milk-producing cows from the middle-horn and 
 crumpled-horn breeds, we place next one of the short-horned class ; not, in- 
 deed, the high-bred Durham short-horn, but a large capacious animal possess- 
 
22 DAIEY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 ing several of its qualities, and giving a large quantity of milk, with as 
 much aptitude to fatten as is consistent vpith the production of milk, and 
 hence is selected by the dairymen of large tovifns, and especially of London, 
 for the supply of milk for a given period, and then to be fatted on distillers' 
 refuse, and other waste matters which a town will afford, and thus give a 
 double pay to the dairyman. 
 
 The Yorkshire cow is of much larger size than either of those we have 
 been considering, and, when fat, will weigh from sixty to eighty stone. Her 
 head is fine, and somewhat small ; there is a serene placidity of eye, which 
 shows a mild and gentle disposition, tending alike to produce fat and milk. 
 The horns are small and white, the muzzle without black spots ; the breast 
 deep and prominent, but that and the shoulders thin ; the neck somewhat 
 narrow, but full below the shoulders, and without any loose skin ; the barrel 
 somewhat round ; the belly capacious ; milk-vein large ; back perfectly 
 straight ; rump wide, and flat as a table ; tail small, and set on so that there 
 is almost a straight line from the tail to the head. The prevailing color is 
 roan, or red or white ; and sometimes white, with the tips of the ears red. 
 The thighs are thin ; but the legs are straight, and somewhat short. The 
 udder is very large and muscular, projecting forward, 'well filled up behind, 
 and so broad as to give the cow the appearance of a waddle in her walking. 
 Indeed, her qualities are not inappropriately described in some doggerel 
 lines often quoted ; and two of the verses we shall venture to give, as most 
 aptly descriptive of the Yorkshire cow : — 
 
 " she's broad in her ribs, and long in her rump, 
 A straight and flat back without ever a hump j 
 She's wide in her hips and calm in her eyes, 
 She's fine in her shoulders, and thin in her thighs. 
 
 She's light in her neck, and small in her tail. 
 She's wide in her breast, and good at the pail ; 
 She's fine in her bone, and silky of skin ; 
 She's a grazier's without, and a butcher's within." 
 
 The engraving on the next page represents a Yorkshire Cow, and is a fair 
 specimen of a short-horn Yorkshire Cow, without pretensions to pedigree, — 
 a sannple of the kind purchased by the dairymen of London. 
 
 The quantity of milk given by these cows by far exceeds that of any 
 others, though less perhaps than that of some others in proportion to her 
 size. The writer has had instances where as much as thirty quarts per day, 
 in summer, have been given. The distended udder has so swollen before 
 calving — that she was obliged to be milked several days before she calved ; 
 and, after calving, had to be milked three times a-day, for fear of the con- 
 sequences of an over-distended udder. She, moreover, gave a large quantity 
 of butter as well as milk, and soon after calving she has given fifteen pounds 
 per week. When the Yorkshire cow is purchased for the London dairies, 
 
THE YOKKSHrae BREED. 
 
 23 
 
 usually after her third calf, her milk changes its character. Rich in her na- 
 tive pastures in butyraceous matter, the object in London, Liverpool, and the 
 large towns, is rather to increase the quantity, than to improve the quality of 
 the milk, hence they are fed with brewers' grains, boiled linseed, &c., &c., 
 and the out-door exercise is restricted, so that their powers of secretion are 
 
 
 THE YORKSHIRE COW. 
 
 all converged to the production of milk alone. Mr. Laycock, in his London 
 dairy, which is supplied by Yorkshire cows, retains no cow which does not 
 yield two gallons of milk per day, and the average of his dairy is as much as 
 nine quarts daily. 
 
 All these things being considered, and taking into account the carcass 
 value of the cow after s-he has yielded her milk, it is not too much to say 
 that there is no breed of cows so highly gifted with milk-secreting qualities, 
 which are also so profitable as the Yorkshire breed. 
 
 Having somewhat minutely considered the three leading breeds of dairy 
 cattle,--the cheese-producing Ayrshire, the butter-secreting Alderney, and 
 ftemilk-giving Yorkshire,-it only remains to glance at the breeds or crosses 
 which prevail in the principal dairy districts of the country, for, as types of 
 this class of cattle, the three breeds above named may be taken as pXt 
 
24 
 
 DAIRY mJSBANDBT. 
 
 THE GLOUCESTERSHIEE BBEED. 
 
 This is more a mixture of the several breeds of the country, long-hom and 
 middle-horn, than any distinctive race, — the old Gloucester covi^ being nearly 
 extinct. The various crosses to which dairy cattle have been subjected have 
 obliterated all traces of the original race, but early crosses with the long- 
 horned breed have somewhat prevailed. The Devons have also been used 
 as a cross to give a more kindly disposition to fatten, — ^the Durham short- 
 horns have also occasionally been tried. 
 
 THE LEIOESTEHSHIKE BREED. 
 
 The old breed of this country have had a more successful struggle for exist- 
 ence, than the native breed of Gloucestershire. It was here that Bleikewell 
 
 exerted his talents to improve the long-homed breed oif cattle, and, though 
 he succeeded in removing the coarseness from these animals, and increased 
 their tendency to fatten, it appears he did not attain the object of either 
 establishing or improving their dairying qualities; and hence his breed is 
 but little prized by the Leicestershire dairymen, who prefer the coarser and 
 
THE KERRT BRKBD. 
 
 25 
 
 larger animals, which give large quantities of good milk, to those which 
 have less milk-giving capabilities, but are more suitable for the grazier.* 
 
 Tl.e yield of cheese, rather than that of milk, is the object of the dairymen 
 of Leicestershire. A good cow will give some 400 pounds of cheese, and 
 produce as many gallons of milk in the year, allowing for the seven 
 weeks when she is supposed to he dry. In some districts the cows are kept 
 for six, or seven, and even, more years, especially when they are good cheese 
 producers ; for it is of more consequence to the farmer to have a cow which, 
 for six years, gives him an annual supply of the stock in trade of his farm — 
 his cheese — than to get a few pounds more or less when she is sold. Indeed 
 a smaller difference really takes place than may be at first imagined. The 
 rich Leicestershire grass enables the farmer, on a large scale at least, to sell 
 off his cattle fat, which would have been disposed of for the dairy. Hence, 
 as old cows of any kind are not expected to be very valuable graziers, he 
 does not expect her to do wonders ; and if he succeeds in getting her moder- 
 ately fat, he is satisfied to take a smaller price per stone for her beef than is 
 received for a primer animal. 
 
 THE CHESHIEE BEEED, 
 
 Is, like that of Gloucestershire, or even more so, becoming rapidly extinct. 
 The old breed of the county was, like that of most dairy districts, a long- 
 homed variety ; but the vicinity of the large town dairy system, introduced 
 into the country by the springing up of large towns, has brought here, as 
 elsewhere, the short-horn cow of Yorkshire into competition with the na- 
 tive breed ; the extra quantity of milk they produce has been regarded some- 
 what more than its quality, and, in consequence, the character of the Cheshire 
 cheese has somewhat deteriorated in the markets. 
 
 THE DOKSETSHIRE BKEED. 
 
 In tlus, as in most dairy districts, milk is rather an object than either form or 
 fat, and hence a somewhat coarse ill-shapen class of cattle prevails. The 
 cattle are of a long-horn breed, large, and coarse, principally of a red color, 
 with fiat chests and buttocks. Attempts have been made to cross this also 
 with the Devon, Hereford, and Ayrshire breeds, but this does not appear to 
 have succeeded ; and the only advance the dairymen have been enabled to 
 make in this countigf has been to introduce one Alderney to a dairy for every 
 ten or twelve of the native breed ; this is found to have a very beneficial 
 tendency, to increase the quantity of cream, and to improve much the quah- 
 ty of Ihe butter. 
 
 .Hnf^!"''/"''""'?''"?.''-^'^'' I'redNew Leicester emploTed in the oliee-e dairy, are 
 .w?= ' r?^""^'"'''"^^' "^ "™^''' 'tat <tf Mr. Warner, near Coventry; and 
 they have a high feeding capacity as well as millcing capacity .-Am. Ed 
 
26 
 
 DAIRY HUSBANDBT. 
 
 THE KERKY BREED. 
 
 Crossing the Irish Channel there is a hardy small-sized cow celebrated as a 
 cottier's dairy cow— the neat pet-like cow of Kerry. Her placid counte- 
 
 
 f^ 
 
 THE KERRY COW. 
 
 nance, patient, meek deportment, fine head and legs, her small tail, flat 
 shoulders, breast, and quarters, and her skinny udder and large milk-vein 
 bespeak the characteristics of the milker, and well they may, for she is a 
 treasure to the cottage farmer ! — so hardy, that she will live where other 
 cattle will starve ; she will yield milk at the expense of her own muscles, 
 nay, will yield it abundantly when they seem all but gone ; and will give it 
 also of quality so rich, that she is a perfect machine for converting the hard- 
 est and coarsest cattle-food into rich and nutritious milk and butter. 
 
 It is not necessary to expatiate on all the crosses or breeds, more or less 
 distinct, which prevail in the dairy districts of this country, nor does it come 
 within the range of this treatise to examine the qualities of the foreign 
 breeds. We will, however, close with a short description of one more ani- 
 mal, which may be classed, after all, as a sort of milking cow. We mean 
 the 
 
rAT-PRODUCINQ BREEDS OF CATTLE. 2? 
 
 SCOTCH WEST HIGHLAND BREED, KYLOE BREED. 
 
 So called from the fact of their having crossed the Kyles, or ferries, with 
 which the Highlands of Scotland abound. These were, it is said by Parkin- 
 son, the models Bakewell had in his eye for the improvement of the Leices- 
 tershire breed, and had he known more of them in the early stages, they 
 might have had their share in the crossings for improving the Dishley herd. 
 They may be considered among the best of the middle-horned race of cattle — 
 having their long rumps, loins, and crops, with but a moderate amount of offal. 
 And as length in these parts is thoroughly consistent with thinness of chest, 
 buttocks, and neck, it is not improbable that improvements in this direction 
 would enable the dairyman to have a rich milk-secreting animal, with a 
 considerable aptitude to fatten and form flesh on the most valuable parts, 
 when she came into the hands of the grazier. 
 
 The hardihood of the Kyloe makes up for the wildness of her nature. 
 She can resist a cold blast under which a delicate lowland dairy-cow would 
 perish. She will consume the small and stunted grasses which appear 
 among the heath, the mosses, and even, in winter, sometimes the sea- weed 
 itself. In winter, when the severity of the weather prevents their obtaining 
 their food from the morass and the moor, they are occasionally assisted by a 
 few oatmeal balls; so that if the aggregate amount of butter and cheese 
 raised by these miserable supplies is but small, it is not to be wondered at. 
 Thirty-two pounds of butter per annum maybe stated as the produce of a 
 cow in the Hebrides, and from ninety to one hundred pounds of cheese, made 
 after their celebrated fashion, being flavored with aromatic herbs, which are 
 added to the rennet. 
 
 It will not be diflScult to see that in general the qualities of dairy cattle 
 are specific and distinct, and that most attempts to transmute them so as to 
 exchange the flatness of conformation of the milker for the ■'■otundity of the 
 grazing animal, are done at the expense of her dairying qualifications. Those 
 breeds possessing the conformations calculated for milk secretion, are pre- 
 cisely those which, from their endurance and hardness, are most suitable for 
 second-rate grass land, upon which, it will be remembered, the dairying pro- 
 cesses are principally carried on. When the soil will not feed the merely 
 fat-producing animal. Providence has wisely provided the milker, in order 
 that no spot of ground should be without its productions fitted for his crea- 
 ture man. 
 
28 DAIRY HUSBANDET. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FAT-PKODUCIKG BREEDS OF CATTLE. 
 
 Whatevee theoretical objections may be raised against over-fed cattle, 
 and great as naay be the attempts to disparage the mountains of fat, as high- 
 ly-fed cattle are sometimes designated, there is no doubt of the practical fact, 
 that the best butcher cannot sell anything but the best fatted beef; and of 
 whatever age, size, or shape, a half-fatted ox may be, he is never selected by 
 judges as fit for human food. Hence a well-fatted animal always commands 
 a better price per pound than one imperfectly fed, and the parts selected as 
 the primest beef are just the parts where there are the largest deposits of fat. 
 The rump, the crop, and the sirloin, the very favorite cuts, which always 
 command from twenty to twenty-five per cent, more than any other part of 
 the ox, are just those parts on which the largest quantities of fat are found ; 
 so that instead of the taste and fashion of the age being against the exces- 
 sive fattening of animals, it is, practically, exactly the reverse. Where there 
 is most fat there is the best lean ; where there is the greatest amount of 
 muscle, without its share of fat, that part is accounted inferior, and used for 
 a different purpose ; in fact, so far from fat being a disease, it is a condition 
 of muscle, necessary to its utility as food — a source of luxury to the rich, 
 and of conafort to the poor, furnishing a nourishing and healthy diet for 
 their families. 
 
 Fattening is a secretive power which grazing animals possess, enabling 
 them to lay by a store of the superfluous food they take for seasons of cold 
 or scarcity. It collects round the angular bones of the animal, and gives the 
 appearance of rotundity ; hence the tendency to deposit fat is indicated, as 
 we have stated, by a roundness of form, as opposed to the flatness of a milk- 
 secreting animal. But i(s greatest use is, that it is a store of heat-producing 
 aliment, laid up for seasons of scarcity and want. The food of animals for 
 the most part may be said to consist of a saccharine, an oleaginous, and an 
 albuminous principle. To the first belong all the starchy, saccharine, and 
 gummy parts of the plants, which undergo changes in the digestive organs 
 similar to fermentation before they can be assimilated in the system ; by 
 them also animal heat is sustained. In indolent animals the oily parts of 
 plants are deposited and laid up as fat ; and, when vigor and strength fails, it 
 is taken up, and also used in breathing to supply the place of the consumed 
 saccharine matter. The albuminous, or gelatinous principle of plants, is 
 mainly useful in forming muscle, while the ashes of plants, the unconsumable 
 parts, are for the supply, mainly, of bone, hair, and horn, but also of muscle 
 and of blood, and to supply the waste, which continually goes on. Now, 
 there are several qualities which are essentially characteristic of a disposition 
 to fatten. There have not, as yet, been any book-rules laid down, as in the 
 
FAT-PRODUDING BREEDS OF CATTLE. 29 
 
 case of Mr. Gu^non's indications of milking cows ; but there are marks 
 so definite and well understood, that they are comprehended and acted upon 
 by every grazier, although they are by no means easy to describe. It is by 
 skillful acumen that the grazier acquires his knowledge, and not by theore- 
 tical rules ; observation, judgment, and experience, powerful perceptive fa- 
 culties, and a keen and minute discrimination and comparison, are essential 
 to his success. 
 
 The first indication he relies on is the touch. It is the absobite criterion 
 of quality, which is supposed to be the keystone of perfection in all animals, 
 whether for the pail or the butcher. The skin is so intimately connected 
 with the internal organs, in all animals, that it is questionable whether even 
 the schools of medicine might not make more use of it, in a diagnosis of dis- 
 ease. Of physiological tendencies in cattle, however, it is of the last and 
 most vital importance. It must neither be thick, nor hard, nor adhere firmly 
 to the muscles. If it is so, the animal is a hard grazer, a difficult and obsti- 
 nate feeder — no skillful man will purchase her — she must go to a novice, and 
 even to him, at a price so low as to tempt him to be a purchaser. On the 
 other hand, the skin must not be thin, like paper, nor flaccid, nor loose in the 
 hand, nor flabby. This is the opposite extreme, and is indicative of deli- 
 cateness, bad, flabby flesh, and possibly of inaptitude to retain the fat. . It 
 must be elastic and velvety, soft and pliable, presenting to the touch a gentle 
 resistance, but so delicate as to give pleasure to the sensitive hand, — a skin, 
 in short, which seems at first to give an indentation from the pressure of the 
 fingers, but which again rises to its place by a gentle elasticity. The hair is 
 of nearly as much importance as the skin. A hard skin will have straight 
 and stiff hair ; it will not have a curl, hut be thinly and lankly distributed 
 equally over the surface. A proper grazing animal will have a mossy coat, 
 not absolutely curled, but having a disposition to a graceful curl, a semifold, 
 which presents a waving inequality, but as different from a close and 
 straightly laid coat, as it is from one standing off the animal at right angles, 
 a strong symptom of disease. It will also, in a thriving animal, be licked 
 here and there with its tongue, a proof that the skin is duly performing its 
 functions. There must be also the full and goggle eye, bright and 
 pressed outwards by the fatty bed below, because, as this is a part 
 where nature always provides fat, an animal capable of developing it 
 to any considerable extent, will havp its indications here, at least, when it 
 exists in excess. 
 
 So much for feeding qualities in the animal, and their conformations indi- 
 cative of this kindly disposition. Next comp such formations of the animal 
 itself as are favorable to the growth of fat, other things being equal. There 
 must be size where large weights are expected. Christmas beef, for instance, 
 is expected to be large as well as fat. The symbol of festivity should be ca- 
 pacious as well as prime in quality. But it is so much a matter of choice 
 
80 
 
 DAIET HUSBANDET. 
 
 and circumstance with the grazier that profit alone will be his guide. The 
 axiom will he, however, as a general rule, that the better the grazing soil 
 the larger the animal may be ; the poorer the soil the smaller the animal. 
 Small animals are unquestionably much more easily fed, and they are well 
 known by experienced men to be those best adapted to second-rate feeding 
 pastures. But beyond this there must be breadth of carcass. This is indi- 
 cative of fattening, perhaps, beyond all other qualifications. If rumps are 
 favorite joints, and produce the best price, it is best to have the animal 
 which will grow the longest, the broadest, and the best rump; the 
 same of crop, and the same of sirloin ; and not only so, but breadth is essen- 
 tial to the consumption of that quantity of food which is necessary to the de-- 
 velopment of a large amount of fat in the animal. Thus a deep wide chest, 
 favorable for the respiratory and circulating functions, enables it to consume 
 a large amount of food, to bum up the sugary matter, and to deposit the fatty 
 matter, — as then useless for respiration, but hereafter to be prized. A full 
 level crop will be of the same physiological utility, while a broad and open 
 framework at the hips will afibrd scope for the action of the liver and 
 kidneys. 
 
 There are other points also of much importance : the head must be .small 
 and fine ; its special use is indicative of the quick fattening.of the animal 
 80 constructed, and also it is indicative of the bones being small and the legs 
 short. For constitutional powers, the beast should have his ribs extended 
 well towards the thigh-bones or hips, so as to leave as little unprotected 
 space as possible. There must be no angular or abrupt points ; all must be 
 rouiid, and broad, and parallel. Any depression in the lean animal, will give 
 a deficient deposit of flesh and fat, at that point when sold to the butcher, 
 and thus deteriorate its value ; and hence the animal must be round and fuU. 
 But either fancy, or accident, or skill — we will not pretend to say which, has 
 associated symmetry with quality and cont^rmation, as a point of great im- 
 
 portance in animals calculated for fattening ; and there is no doubt that, to a 
 
THE SHORT-HORN OR DURHAM BREED. 31 
 
 certain extent, this is so. The beast must be a system of mathematical 
 lines. To the advocate of symmetry the setting on of a tail will be a con- 
 demning fault ; indeed, the ridge of the back like a straight line, with the 
 outline of the belly exactly parallel, viewed from the side, and a depth and 
 sijuareness when viewed from behind, which remind us of a geometrical 
 cube rather than a vital economy, may be said to be the indications of excel- 
 lence in a fat ox. We give an outline of the points of excellence in one of 
 these animals, with the method of cutting up the beast in the London mar- 
 kets. Now, these qualities are inherent in some breeds ; there may be cases 
 and instances in all the superior breeds, and in most there may be failures. 
 By far the first in the list for feeding excellence are — 
 
 THK SHOET-HOEN, OR BTJEHAM BEEEB. 
 
 The origin of the breed is involved in great obscurity. They are suppos- 
 ed by some to be traced into Holderness, — and to have been imported Hol- 
 stein, according to others ; from continental Europe they certainly seem to 
 have come ; and, being successively improved by a variety of breeders, they 
 have ended in that distinct race of animals, extraordinary beyond all others 
 for their astonishing propensities to feed. Others, again, refer their origin to 
 a native race of cattle called the Teeswater, because they have from time 
 immemorial inhabited the valley which the Tees has formed by its washings 
 down of the mountain limestone rocks, in which it has its origin ; these it is 
 said, being crossed by the Holderness importations, gradually became a new 
 race. 
 
 The late Mr. Bates traces back the short horns to a breed in the possession 
 of the Aslabies of Studley, and the Rev. H. Berry to an improvement in the 
 East Riding of Yorkshire by the importation of a breed from Holland by 
 Sir W. St. Quintin of Scampston. Of these early ages of the short-horns, 
 hoK'ever, it is hardly necessary to say more than this, — that a breed from 
 time immemorial inhabited the valley of the Tees, and, trained and bred to 
 feed, for a vast succession of generations, on its fertile deposits, acquired the 
 habits of speedy fat-forming ; for in these valleys, where Aaj/ o/one will feed 
 the largest ox, the production of fat would be so far an object, that breeders 
 would always select the best and easiest feeding animals ; and thus the cha- 
 racter of the district, through a number of centuries, might easily lay the 
 groundwork of that improvement which the Milbanks, the Greys, the 
 Booths, the Coates, and, above all, the Collings have effected. 
 
 We win give the latest description of the qualities of the modern short- 
 horn from the most recent authority, Mr. Dickson. After referring to the 
 general symmetry of the frame and its delicate color, either deep-red, cream- 
 colored, white, or delicate roan — the latter, the most fashionable and indeed 
 prevailing color — he speaks of it as possessing " the mellowest touch, sup- 
 ported on small clean limbs, showing, like those of the greyhound and the 
 
32 DAIET HUSBANDRY. 
 
 race horse, the union of strength with fineness, and ornamented with a small, 
 lengthy, tapering head, neatly set on a broad, firm, deep neck; furnished 
 with a small muzzle, wide nostrils, prominent mildly-beaming eyes ; thin, 
 large, veiny ears, set near the crown of the head, and protected in front with 
 semicircularly-bent white or waxy colored short, smooth, pointed horns ; 
 all these several parts combine to form a symmetrical harmony which has 
 never been surpassed in beauty and sweetness by any other species of the 
 domesticated ox." 
 
 Keeping in mind what was said to he the perfection of a fat animal, the 
 same authority, speaking of the short-horn, says, — " we have a straight level 
 back from behind the horns to the top of the tail, full buttocks, and a project- 
 ing brisket ; we have, in short, the rectangular form ; we have also the level 
 line across the hook-bones (hip) , and the level top of the shoulder across the 
 ox, and perpendicular lines down the hind and fore legs on both sides ; these 
 constituting the square form when the ox is viewed before and behind, and 
 we have straight parallel lines from the sides of the shoulders along the ut- 
 most parts of the ribs and the sides of the hind quarters ; and we have these 
 lines connected at their ends by others of shorter and equal length across the 
 end of the rump and the top of the shoulder ; thus constituting the rectan- 
 gular form of the ox when viewed from above down the hack." 
 
 It will be very wide from our purpose to show, either the immense 
 amount of fat which has at one time or another accumulated on the backs 
 of these wonderful animals, or the speed with which this has been done. 
 Neither would it tend much to elucidate the principles of breeding or graz- 
 ing, to detail at any length the prices which short-horns have commanded 
 and do command. 
 
 The Durham Ox, a son of Charles Colling's Favorite, weighed 187 stone 
 2 lbs. The Yorkshire Ox, bred by Mr. Dunhill, of Newton, near Doncaster, 
 weighed, when, killed, 264 stone 13 lbs. These are weights of 14 lbs. to 
 the stone, and show strange capabilities to lay on fat and flesh possessed by 
 this extraordinary race of animals. Though there is not, perhaps, another 
 instance on record of any bull selling for so much money as Charles Colling's 
 Comet, which sold for 1000 guineas, and whose herd, forty-seven in number, 
 sold for £7115 ; yet £500, £600, and as much as £800, are still given for a 
 first-rate short-horn bull. 
 
 Nor is it in their rapid fattening alone that this race of cattle excels. They 
 are beyond all question, the most remarkable for early maturity. Fat depo- 
 sits are generally the result of a mature state of the animal. There are few 
 animals who will lay it on, to any degree, at least, until they are fully 
 formed. The short-horii is an exception. They commence the fat-forming 
 process as calves. This seems to increase with their growth, and at a year 
 old they have all the semblance of cows. 
 
 The feeders of short-horns, instead of keeping them to three, four, or five 
 
THE HEREFORD BREED. 
 
 33 
 
 years of age, fatten them and sell them off at from two to two-and-a-half 
 years; they can thus turn off one-half more, at least, if not a greater pro- 
 portion, of beef, from their farms or their stalls, than could possibly be done 
 with any other breed. Hence they have quick returns and large amounts 
 of beef for the food-consumer. We will not deny that the short-horn re- 
 quires good keep, and shelter, and care. She needs nourishing diet ; but she 
 pays for all, for she is a cow when another is a calf, the Ox is fat when the 
 other is growing. Hence the short-horn stands the very first on the list of 
 
 
 
 THE SHOUT-HORNED COW. 
 
 the fat-producing breeds of cattle. We give a drawing of a specimen of a 
 matured short-horn cow. * 
 
 THE HEEEFORD BREED. 
 
 This is a middle-horn breed of cattle, upon which a good deal of pains have 
 lately been taken. The success of short-horn breeders,— of the Booths, the 
 
 « This cow was not only a capital cow as her portrait shows, but was a superior 
 milker, yielding a large quantity of rich milk. 
 
 2* 
 
34 
 
 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 Bates, (he Wileys, the Hoppers, and a score more of short-horn patrons have 
 caused a healthy emulation, and the difference between the Hereford cattle 
 now exhibited, and those shown some ten or twelve years ago, shows not 
 only that these breeders have judgment and skill, but it must also be con- 
 fessed, that the breed have fattening capabilities. The old Hereford was a 
 deep brown animal, sometimes with an ocliery cast, free from white, like 
 the Devons ; but an improved breed now possess the county, in which the 
 invariable fashion is a dark red, with a white face, white belly, and not tin- 
 frequently a white back. The skin is thicker and less mellow than that of 
 the short-horn, nor has the hair the mossy softness, or graceful curl of the 
 latter. The eye is full and lively, the chest deep and broad, the loin also 
 broad, and the hips well-expanded; a level broad rump, a round barrel, and 
 full crop ; full, deep flank, well-ribbed home ; small bones, clean and per- 
 pendicular thighs, belly almost parallel with back, head small. . Indeed, 
 
 THE HEREFOUD COW. (mR. SOTHAm's MATCHLKSS.) 
 
 color and symmetry are perhaps the predominant qualifications which se- 
 cure the high favor of the breeder. 
 
 From the above description it will be seen that the Hereford, possessing 
 many. essentials in form, is destitute of the quality producing early maturity, 
 and speedy disposition to fatten. He lays on his flesh, soft, and mottled, on 
 the best parts ; he has full sirloins, rumps, and crop, but he shows his beeJ 
 
THE WEST HIGHLAND SCOT. 85 
 
 all outside ; and he requires much more time to develop his qualities than 
 the short-horn. In milking qualities the cow is even behind the ox in feed- 
 ing, and it must in general be three and a half to four years old before it can 
 be fatted with any very marked success. They require a rich pasture, 
 though a hardy animal, and the average weight when fat, does not exceed 
 fifty-five to sixty-five stones, of fourteen pounds. Herefordshire being more 
 a breeding than a feeding county, the cattle are reared there, and sold off at 
 three years old to graze in the counties of Leicester, Northampton, and the 
 rich grass districts ; but with all its good qualities it must be admitted that 
 it requires from ten to twelve months more to feed than its more favored 
 compeer, the short-horn. We give a sketch of a first-rate specimen. Much 
 controversy has gone on lately as to the merits of the two breeds — the short- 
 horn and the Hereford ; but it must be conceded, that while the short-horn 
 is penetrating into the heart of Scotland, into the south of England, and into 
 the county of Gloucester, on the one hand, and into Norfolk on the other, 
 the Hereford is hardly keeping his ground, he is making no inroads into any 
 one important new grazing district; and unless the gigantic efforts now 
 made to amend the characteristics of the breed effect something more, they 
 will dwindle still further away. 
 
 THE WEST HIGHLAND SOOT. 
 
 Next to the Hereford in the ranks of fattening animals, we place this breed 
 of cattle ; and they well deserve it, — for they will fatten in places and on 
 food on which both the short-horn, and the Hereford too, would perish. 
 This West Highland breed is somewhat wild in its nature, and will not bear 
 the least confinement, tying, or control. It is eminently gregarious, and if 
 kept alone will generally fret and pine. The peculiarity of the breed is, that 
 it is a small animal, generally deep jet-black, pale red, or dun, seldom any 
 white spots on any part of the body ; its horns are long, and turned upwards 
 and outwards. The coat is peculiar, soft, long, and absolutely curled, so as 
 to forni a sort of fleece. Another peculiarity is, that they form their beef 
 almost entirely on the back, which is therefore straight, the body is round ; 
 and they lay on fat rapidly under circumstances in which another animal 
 would literally starve. 
 
 He can assimilate, from a soil so barren as to be sterile for others, as 
 much food as will enable him to feed— for to grow is out of the question ■ 
 that process is performed on his native hills; if indulged, however, he will 
 pay for it in the rapidity of his fattening, and the excellence of his beef. 
 They will weigh, with amazingly little care, some 48 to 50 stone, and some 
 have been said to reach as far as 70. The exceptions to this rule, however 
 are very important in special cases. The Duke of Northumberland having 
 a very promising Argylshire " stot "—bullocks, as they are called more 
 generally in England— kept him as long as he saw him improve to see 
 
86 
 
 DAIRY HUSBANDRT. 
 
 
 w 
 
 \. --■ 
 
 
 '. ;•■■. 
 
 THE -WEST-HIGHLAND OX. 
 
 ■what he would weigh. He was five and a half years old, and weighed 
 exclusive of offal, 100 stones 4 lbs. Though, perhaps, one of the heaviest 
 of the breed ever slaughtered, he was neither the fattest nor the most in- 
 active, but seemed in that state to possess all the activity which he had on 
 his native hills. To give an idea of his keeping, and of the hardihood ol 
 his race, it is only necessary to give an account of his food. In the first 
 winter he was turned out to a poor pasture, with a little had hay ; in the 
 summer he had again a poor land pasture ; in the next winter he had again 
 a poor pasture, but a few turnips ; in the following summer he had a fair 
 pasture, and the same pasture in winter, with a more liberal allowance of 
 turnips ; in the third summer he was tolerably well grazed ; in the fourth 
 winter, he had as many turnips as he could eat in the sheltered straw fold ; 
 and in the summer in which he was fatted, he had all the indulgence of a 
 feeding animal, viz., cut clover, hay, mangel-wurzel, turnips, bean-meal, and 
 a little oilcake ; the latter of which he always disliked. Mr. Quarl says, 
 his " fat was distributed in an uncommon equable manner, of a color re- 
 semhling the finest grass butter, and as firm as wax ; the muscle was in 
 ample proportion, bright in color, of fine texture, and beautifully marbled by 
 admixture of his excellent fat. Our cut is an engraving, from an original 
 drawing, of a winner at Smithfield, of this class. 
 
THE DEVON BREED. 
 
 87 
 
 THE DEVON BREED. 
 
 If this had been a treatise on drawing cattle, we should have placed this 
 middle-homed description of animals first in our list, instead of almost last. 
 They are physiologically well formed animals ; they are a very old, and 
 carefully kept, distinct breed of animals. They are docile and tractable, pa- 
 tient and gentle ; hardy, notwithstanding their warm and humid climate ; 
 but they are not first-rate milkers, although very good feeders. They will 
 grow to a considerable size ; and they produce a class of beef, at all periods 
 of their growth, of capital quality. The red color — all red, and nothing but 
 red — is a sine qua non in a Devonshire Ox ; he has a moderately straight top, 
 a fine serene countenance, and small head ; a somewhat thin skin, covered 
 with curly hair. The rump is narrower than in the short-horns, and the 
 chine lighter and flatter ; but the brisket is large and full, the legs fine, the 
 shoulder slanting, the neck long and thin. He is a beast of draught, and for 
 this he is unequaled. 
 
 Mr. Parkinson, in his invaluable and practical Treatise on Live Stock, 
 gives the weight of some specimens of six years' old cattle, which weighed 
 some 57 stone 2 lbs. ; but the cows much less. He says of them — " On the 
 whole, they must be allowed to be good cattle for their soils, and particular. 
 
 DEVON BULL. 
 
 ly where oxen are worked at the plow. When slaughtered, they are a 
 sort of beef that suits the consumption of many customers." 
 
38 
 
 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 Among the most successful breeders of Devonshire cattle may he men- 
 tioned Mr. Turner of Barton, near Exeter, Mr. Quartly of MoUand, (who is 
 the most distinguished winner,) Mr. Merson of Brinsworthy, and Mr. 
 Davy of Moulton. 
 
 GALLOWAY BREED. 
 
 The Galloways are prominent fat-producing animals of Scotland, and are 
 bred in great numbers in Galloway and Dumfrieshire. They are hornless, 
 mostly black, are small in size, compact, short-legged, hardy, have thick 
 mossy coats, and are good feeders. As milkers they are very indifferent, 
 
 GALLOWAY COW. 
 
 although, like all small milkers, the quality is rich. They are mostly driven 
 south and fed off on the good pastures in England, and like the Highlanders, 
 bring the highest price in the London markets. The joints are of a good 
 size for family roasts, and the meat is of the best description ; thus making it 
 the most desirable. 
 
 THE ANGUS BREED. 
 
 We shall close our remarks on the fat-producing class of oxen by shortly 
 describing a hornless, or polled race of animals — the Angus " Doddies," as 
 they are called. Being bad milkers, they are generally used for grazing, 
 and very much fatted in their native country ; they are also purchased for 
 
THE ANGUS BREED. 
 
 39 
 
 
 ANGUS OX. 
 
 feeding by the graziers of Leicesterstire and Norfolk. Their color is gen- 
 erally black, but occasionally red ; the head fine ; the breast deep ; the back 
 not quite straight, being a little depressed at the loin, and somewhat narrow ; 
 the eye full and clear; the touch generally good, and the hair thick and cur- 
 ly. The tendency of the flesh, as in all the hardy Scottish cattle, is to form 
 on the back ; but they will weigh from 70 to 80 stone, and will even reach 
 as far as 100 when five or six years of age. 
 
 Qualities are so co-existent with conformation, that, as a general rule, it 
 may be received as an axiom. And as dairy and butcher qualities are gen- 
 erally combined only to a very limited extent, and as both qualities are rarely 
 high in the same breed, it becomes the agriculturist to make his selection, 
 according to the object he has in view. 
 
40 DAIRY HU8BAJJDE.T. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF OATTLE-BKEEDINe. 
 
 0«E of the most wonderful instances of man's supremacy over creation is 
 the influence he is ahle to exercise in directing vital processes ; here his 
 power is perfectly talismanic. Within certain limits, he has the power of 
 asserting his dominion so far as to make stern nature obey, and do his bid- 
 ding. If he wants size or hardihood, activity or greatness, milk or fat, nay, 
 whether he demand wool, or mutton, or beef, he can so arrange the elements 
 with which Divine Providence has blessed him, that he can bend, and 
 mould, and adapt them to his will, until he has produced the kind and class 
 of animal he requires. 
 
 And this really arises more from individual skill than science ! Whatever 
 physiological principles are involved — and there are such, laid broad and 
 deep — they are discovered by the facts known to the breeder, and teach him 
 little in the management of his business. The perseverance and skill, the 
 powers of observation and discrimination possessed by some breeders, have, 
 doubtless, been the cause of their success, and led to England becoming pre- 
 eminent for food-producing animals ; for in no other part of the known 
 world can it be said that there are anything like such native specimens to be 
 found, either for producing flesh, milk, butter, or cheese. 
 
 To watch physiological tendencies, and avail themselves of these judicious- 
 ly in practice, was practiced by breeders long anterior to scientific research. 
 Intelligently perceiving what was required, CoIUng and Bakewell attempted 
 and attained the art of producing superior cattle and sheep. Seeing also the 
 necessity of economizing food, they set about producing those animals which 
 came to maturity early ; and so produced vastly more animal food from the 
 same amount of vegetation. Knowing that fat was an element of favor in 
 a northern clime, they endeavored to obtain animals with a tendency to se- 
 crete it in large quantities. In order to do this, they observed the qualities 
 indicative of these tendencies ; and, knowing that it is true in physiology, as 
 in mathematics, that like produces like, they selected and bred from ani- 
 mals possessing them, until they stamped their qualities, permanently and 
 indelibly, and invariably, on their produce. With these they managed to 
 combine, perhaps, their invariable concomitants, symmetry and beauty ; and 
 hence the origin of our flocks of Leicester sheep, and our herds of short- 
 horn cattle. 
 
 There are in all animals, high as well as low, those exceptional instances 
 where an individual far outstrips his congeners in some particular quality. 
 Now, if another possessing the same qualities should be paired with this in- 
 
THE PRINCIPLES OF CATTLE BREEDING. 41 
 
 dividual, there is certainly no guarantee that the produce will exactly inherit 
 hoth. A knowledge of this fact has disheartened many a breeder. He 
 wanted milk ; and he selected for his female breeding animal the best milk- 
 cow in his dairy, and he carried her to a bull who was also the son of a 
 dairy-cow of standing and character. He expects the produce to be a milk- 
 er; but he is disappointed ; and in disgust he retires and leaves to chance 
 what he thinks he cannot obtain by skill and effort. 
 
 But he is in error. The principles of breeding are perfect; but he has not 
 had the patience to wait for the fruit. One of his selections was an acciden- 
 tal product. She was not the successor of a favored ancestry. She so far 
 outstripped her race, as to be possessed of qualities in which they were de- 
 ficient ; but her produce bred back, they resembled more the true breed of 
 which she was an exception ; and thus the breeder was disappointed in his 
 expectations, and gave up on the first skirmish, instead of bearing the brunt 
 of the battle. He should have gone on selecting the most famous for milk 
 within his reach ; and he would, by and by, "have acquired as a tendency of 
 his breed, the accidental qualities, which would have become the rule instead 
 of the exception. 
 
 Hence the improvement of a breed of stock is not the work of a day or 
 a year, but the business of a life-time ; and if a breeder were to .start de novo 
 to engraft some peculiar tendency on a herd of cattle or a iiock of sheep, it 
 might he that his sons would reap the benefit of his skill and efforts, if they 
 were rightly directed ; for there would be no certainty of the full qualities 
 being established in only two or three generations. 
 
 There are not only limits, therefore, to the mathematical axiom that like 
 produces like, modified by vital powers with which the breeder has to deal, 
 but we think there is a^rinciple deeper still, one little noticed by writers on 
 breeding stock, but one which all our great breeders knew and practiced, 
 viz., that some one animal has much more power of transmitting his quali- 
 ties than others. We know at this moment a couple of gentlemen, [Messrs. 
 Booths,] who show the best short-horn cows and heifers, who may be said 
 to have the best female animals perhaps in the kingdom, but who hardly 
 ever get a prize for one of their bulls ; and whose best animals were all 
 got by a bull who never was qualified to merit a single distinction. He had 
 n6 great symmetry himself, was coarse and ungainly ; but he had so much 
 vital force that he impressed symmetrical beauty on all his progeny, be his 
 partners what they might ; he was thus the sire of a complete herd of 
 winners. The remarkable results of the CoUings in cattle-breeding were 
 really due either to the skill they had in seeking this transmissive power, or 
 to the accident of obtaining by chance an animal who possessed it, in their 
 bull, Hubback. 
 
 It is quite clear that to have any merit as a short- horn, there must be 
 more or less of the Hubback blood. He was the sire of many of the Col- 
 
42 DAIEY HUSBANDRT. 
 
 lings's best cattle, and his grandson, Foljamte, was acknowledged to he an 
 animal which much improved their herds; the hull Favorite was from the 
 union of a brother and sister, whose common parent was this same Fol- 
 jambe. 
 
 Thus in breeding animals the counterpart of each other, though it may 
 not in the first generation prove all that could be wished, yet it gives the 
 tendency in the breed to progress in that direction ; and the careful and per- 
 severing selection of animals with the same tendency, through several gen- 
 erations, must have these results. 
 
 The difficulties now in the way of breeders are, by no means, those which 
 met the early improvers. They had to make a groundwork from raw ma- 
 terials, so to speak, and had to carry them single handed through every 
 stage of their manufacture. Now it is different; there are in the present 
 breeds of the country quite variety enough to found any of the required 
 qualities of animals upon, and the difficulties of selection are comparatively 
 light. It requires, however, ai much skill as ever to keep any one variety 
 of animals foremost in the race, when there are so many excellent sorts to 
 breed from ; the original improvers therefore had less difficulty than the 
 present race in maintaining their position. 
 
 True, they had to work without rules or experience, but they had 
 the whole field before them and they had fewer competitors ; the race they 
 improved was such, that every step they took was palpable and definite ; 
 there were fewer combinations of blood necessary, and consequently less 
 risk of a failure. Now, the main effort is directed to overcome a defect. 
 Suppose it is the very common one of a flat crop — a hollow behind the 
 shoulder blade. That sjre must be selected, whose ])eculiar physical confor- 
 mation, in harmony in other respects with the head, has this point in per- 
 fection. On the calves there may be little impression ; but if they are again 
 paired with another animal having « similar conformation, there will be 
 more impression produced, and on a greater proportion of the herd. Still 
 they will he variable ; and it will require effort after effort, and a long pro- 
 cess of attentive selection and rejection before it becomes a uniform charac- 
 teristic of the herd, and the change be sustained. 
 
 In speaking of the modes of improving a breed, the question arises, — how 
 far is this to be done by the adoption of a male, or a change in the female 
 animals. The universal consent, we may say, of breeders of all classes, 
 seems to award the val ue to the male. The greatest care is taken in select- 
 ing a stallion ; while the worst and most useless mare is sent to him. The 
 flock master will give from twenty to fifty pounds for the use of a ram, who 
 would grudge to give five for a ewe ; but it is different in caltle. The dai- 
 ryman is very careful in selecting his cows. They are watched, as heifers, 
 for the development of their good qualities, and are preserved either for 
 their succession to a maternal race of milkers, or because they are promis- 
 
THE PEINCIPLES OF CATTLE BREEDING. 43 
 
 ing in themselves ; but the bull to which they are sent is too often a matter 
 of convenience rather than selection. They knovi' he is a bull and that is 
 enough. The too usual mode is to try the heifer by her lirst calf If she 
 promises w^ell as a milker, she is kept for a covi' ; if not, she is consigned to 
 the grazier for the butcher. Reasoning from analogy, the mother would be 
 naturally considered as more influencing the animal than the sire. The in- 
 fluence of the mother is long and continuous. Her blood flows through its 
 veins, it partakes of her habits and sympathies ;" but still the vital force of 
 the male animal is pre-eminent ; much as the mother may influence the 
 constitution, the sire possesses a far greater sway over the conformation, 
 the qualities, and the appearance. If, therefore, the object of the breeder is 
 to perpetuate and impress the good qualities, and to remove the defects of 
 his breed, he will be careful in the selection of both the sire and the dam of 
 his breeding animals. A single failure — a single year's neglect — may stamp 
 qualities on his race which it may take years to eradicate ; for even to keep 
 a breeding stock in a high state of excellence, is by no means so easy a task 
 as may be imagined by some. 
 
 This brings us to the much agitated question of breeding in andin ; in other 
 words, of breeding animals solely from the same stock, all possessing more 
 or less affinity for each other, and all originating in one or two varieties of 
 animals. The controversy has raged from Bakewell downward. He bred 
 entirely from his own Jtock. Opponents to the system say his animals 
 became small and feeble in constitution, and they failed. But he only 
 adopted one of the first axioms of breeding,— he selected the best he cmildfiml. 
 He saw and knew none like his own, and he took them because he could 
 not find their equals. He attained high perfection by the system. He got 
 a breed of good animals — they were attaining good qualities ; he bred from 
 them with each other,' to give it permanency and uniformity, and indelibility 
 to his flock and to his herd. And what if he did get them small and deli- 
 cate ? His object was to produce animals less coarse, less gross, less hard 
 than the original stock; and be succeeded, although possibly he carried his 
 predilections too far. Analogies are attempted to be made between the 
 human subject and the brute. It is said that in the former the most serious 
 physical and mental disorders arise from too near consanguinity. A family 
 intermarries, afllicted with mania, or consumption, or scrofula ; intermar- 
 riage where these diseases exist will increase the virulence of the tendency 
 until the family may become weak and feeble or may become extinct. 
 They do so, not because they breed in and in, but because they disregard 
 the first principles of increase ; they render permanent the defects of the 
 stock, by alliances of similar tendencies. Mr. Bates's rule was, " breed in 
 and in from a bad stock, and you commit ruin and devastation ; but if a good 
 stock be seltcted, youmay breed in-and-in as much as youplcase. If deficiency 
 of mental power be a consequence of in-and-in breeding, surely it will be 
 
44 DAIRY HUSBANDRT. 
 
 an advantage in feeding animals, — for the sensuous wth them ought entirely 
 to swallow up the intellectual. 
 
 The objectors to consanguineous breeding, and its deteriorating and enfee- 
 bling character, seem to forget, that, in the case of the wild cattle at 
 Chillingham Park, to which allusion was made in the introduction, no cross 
 has been made for an immemorial number of centuries ; and thus unchanged 
 and unchangeable, they remain, without deterioration, without feebleness, 
 a standing objection to the indiscriminate condemnation of the system of 
 breeding from the same stock. 
 
 The answer, that these animals do not show any improved points, is an 
 argument in favor of this system of breeding, for the fact that they never 
 had them, and possibly never will have the chance, so long as the breed is 
 kept pure and unalloyed, is quite decisive in its favor. Like all other wild 
 animals, a natural law prevents the feeble male from exercising any unfa- 
 vorable tendency. They have a king : during the rutting season fierce and 
 almost deadly battles take place amongst the bulls for the favor of the 
 females. The hardiest, strongest, and most enduring male is the victor, and 
 he becomes the parent of the future herd. This may, and is likely to con- 
 tinue for some years, — for, once admitted a victor, a great change must take 
 place before the contest will be renewed. But no sooner does the male 
 animal become feeble, than another season renews the strife — the once 
 patriarch is vanquished, and the youthful victor, 'full of vigor and virility, 
 is in turn the paramour of the herd. Now if we admit the influence of the 
 male animal to be the greatest, we have here the most perfect adaptation for 
 the weeding of the herd, and the best constitutioned bull is parent of the 
 whole race for one or two years of production. It is wonderful then that 
 they have no points, no superiority, no distinctiveness of breeding ; there is 
 no selection of adaptation, of symmetry, even of semblance, but there is 
 strength of constitution in the male — the quality above all others for securing 
 strength of constitution, hardness, and size in the offspring. And assuming 
 that this tyrant strength in the leader of the herd will continue for three suc- 
 cessive years — a thing extremely probable, there is a degree of consangui- 
 nity which few breeders will attempt. It may be said of Mr. Bates's herd, 
 whose quality is unsurpassed, now that he is dead, that the heifers were 
 frequently bulled by their own grandfather, or the cow by her grandson. 
 And this was not more irregular than the wild habits of the whole herd at 
 Chillingham, when the daughter, if not the grand-daughter, must breed with 
 the grendsire or the sire. 
 
 Nor were Mr. Bates and Mr. Bakewell alone ; Mr. Colling bred his 
 animals in very close affinity, and Mr. Mason, of Cliilton, second only to Mr. 
 Colling, was an in-and-in breeder. No one will accuse Mr. Bates, however, 
 after a jubilee (or period of fifty years) of in-and-in breeding of the closest 
 kind, of having either a small sized or feeble herd. 
 
THE PRINCIPLES OF CATTLE BKEEDING. 45 
 
 The very opposite to consanguineous breeding is the system of crossing. 
 When two distinct kinds of animals are made to breed with each other, a 
 distinct variety is produced, called a hybrid or mule. Now there is not, 
 externally, a greater difference - between a Shetland pony and a donkey, 
 than there is between a Durham short-horn and an Irish long-horn. But 
 zoologically there is a more marked and distinct dissimilarity. Now, when 
 the zoological difference is beyond a given range, nature interposes and will 
 permit no future admixture. Mules are almost invariably unproductive. 
 But with ill-assorted crosses of different breeds of cattle she operates 
 another way. The union of a male and female, of different qualities, pro- 
 duces, sometimes, a happy combination of the qualities of the two, and 
 considerable uniformity in the produce ; but the union of these products 
 again, amongst each other, instead of inducing a greater uniformity, ends in 
 a crowd of mongrels, differing from each other as much as from their grand- 
 sires, and possessing the conformations and qualities of neither. 
 
 For instance, a cross was attempted between the Herefords and the 
 Devons — the fat forming Hereford, and the active working Devon. The 
 cross was a failure. The power and activity of the Devons were lost, their 
 working qualities impaired, and still they did not fatten like the Herefords. 
 A cross of the same with the Alderney improved indeed the dairy qualities 
 of the breed, but lost the muscle so necessary for work and the capacity for 
 feeding, so that this cross was also a failure. Again a cross has been 
 attempted between the Hereford and the Kyloe. This, it might be supposed, 
 would improve the back of the Hereford, give hardness, and keep up the 
 aptitude to fatten ; but no, the cross had the fattening qualities of neither, 
 and the quietness of the Hereford was lost in the wild habits of the Kyloe, 
 although the bull was a Hereford, and the cows were of the Highland breed. 
 
 Where a large and powerful-framed animal is covered with a short-horn 
 bull, quality and aptitude to fatten is given. To go further is not judicious ; 
 to attempt a cross with a milk-producing cow is unnatural and absurd ; but 
 there is no sort of large framed animal intended for the grazier, which 
 would not be improved by a cross with the short-horn for one generation. 
 With the smaller West Highland cattle, even for grazing, we should have 
 doubts. They live ia a hard, bleak district to which a dash of short-horn 
 blood, however small, could hardly ever accommodate itself; but to the lafger 
 Scottish breeds a single crossingwould be invaluable. This maybe strikingly 
 instanced in the c^ase of a cross between a short-horn bull and a large Aber- 
 deenshire cow, to which was awarded the prize by the Highland and Agri- 
 cultural Society of Scotland in 1834. The live weight of this cow was 224 
 stone, of 8 lbs. to the stone ; and she weighed when killed 173 stone 3 pounds 
 
 To attempt a greater proportion of short-horn blood is to run a risk of 
 iosmgthe hardihood of the northern tribes of cattle, without giving much 
 more aptitude to fatten. It is certainly true that the maturity of the breeds 
 
46 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 might be accelerated. We might see the Galloway a cow at two years old, 
 but even this must arrest the hardihood of the breed, would impair its en- 
 durance of a northern blast, and waste in winter the advantage gained in 
 summer. 
 
 It is questionable, however, where crossing stops. Some very grave facts 
 have been arranged and classified to show that when a pure-breed animal 
 has once been impregnated by one of another breed, such impregnated ani- 
 mal is thereby for ever afterwards a cross, and may be expected to produce 
 cross-bred, and no more pure-bred young. But the notion is capable of be- 
 ing carried further still, that a female animal will always produce young re- 
 sembling in character the animal by which she was first impregnated, whe- 
 ther of a cross-breed or of the same breed as herself. 
 
 Now, if this approaches to correctness, and if a single cross will stamp its 
 character for ever upon the animal which is the subject of it, there arises 
 the necessity for the utmost caution in selecting a male animal, especially iu 
 the first impregnation of the female. • 
 
 The hypothesis of Dr. Harvey of Aberdeen, and Professor M'Gillivray is, 
 that the intimate connection, at least in bovine animals, between the foetus 
 and its mother, — consisting of an absolute circulation of the blood of the 
 fcetus through the veins of the mother, and vice versa, — so impregnates the 
 mother with the vital functions of the sire, as to render her for ever after- 
 wards incapable of transmitting her own unimpaired qualities to her progeny, 
 making her indeed to partake of the character of her first young, whatever 
 be the defects or peculiarities of the sire.* 
 
 The case of the Earl of Morton's chestnut mare, which was put to a 
 quagga, or wild ass, is well known. The produce gave the most unmistake- 
 able signs of the quagga in its head, its ears, its stripe on its shoulders, &c. ■ 
 Afterwards, in three successive seasons, the mare was put to a black Arabian 
 horse, and in as many years did the foal strictly resemble the quagga. 
 
 We shall give one instance more, tending to show that the effect is in 
 some cases produced through the imagination of the mother. Mr. Boswell 
 relates what he considered a well authenticated instance of a hornless cow 
 coming in season when one of his neighbor's horned black and white oxen 
 broke over the fence, and accompanied the cow home to the bull ; both the 
 sire and the dam were black and hornless, nor had the farmer any horned or 
 spotted beast on his farm. The produce of the cow was black and white, 
 and in due time its horns grew resembling those of the ox. If the same 
 neighbor had not also a black and white horned bull, the fact is very im- 
 portant ! 
 
 Little as these facts prove in themselves, they raise a doubt as to whether 
 the imagination of the mother may not in some indescribable way or other, 
 
 * The facts to contradict this hypothesis are so numerous, that its refutation is use- 
 less. — Am. Ed. 
 
THB PRINCIPLES OF CATIXE BREEDING. 4^ 
 
 operate upon the offspring ; however, it is evidently far safer to run no risks 
 with very superior animals, and to cross only with those when subsequent 
 progeny was of less consequence. 
 
 It is sometimes desirable that the farmer should possess the power of 
 controlling the ratio of the sexes in the animals he breeds. The wonderful 
 ratio in which they are produced in nature, is one proof of the all-wise pro- 
 visions of the Almighty in making them subject to certain laws. Many in- 
 vestigations iiave been made to show how far this is within the control of 
 man. A dairy man is particularly interested in the production of heifer 
 calves, wherewith to increase his dairy stock ; a grazier may be equally de- 
 sirous of producing bullocks for large weights and summer grazing; while 
 a breeder for sale may be anxious to see a goodly proportion of bulls. 
 How far can he control this production ? is a question of interest and im- 
 portance. Hofkener, a German, made some calculations as regards the 
 human species, which tended to show that where the father was younger 
 than the mother, the proportion of male births to females was 90.6 per cent. ; 
 when of equal age, 90 per cent. ; but when the age of the father was greater 
 than the mother, nine to eighteen years, it was 143 per cent. 
 
 Similar in principle was the experience of M. C. C. de Buzareurgnes, who 
 professed to have the power of controlling the sexes in sheep ; his principle 
 being the same as the above, viz., that vigor was favorable to female, and 
 the converse to male births. For females, he proposed to select young rams 
 and place them in a good pasture ; for males, three to five shear animals 
 and to place them in an inferior pasture. His experiment was successful. 
 In his female trial there were seventy-six female lambs produced against 
 thirty-five males ; and, in his male trial, there were produced eighty males 
 against fifty-five females. Another trial was made by M. Cournuejouls. 
 One section was put to young male lambs, and on a good pasture ; the other 
 on a poorer pasture, and with old rams. The result was, that in the first 
 experiment there were fifteen males and twenty-five females, and, in the 
 second, there were twenty-six males and fourteen females. 
 
 Buzareurgnes also showed that in several lots the approximations to male 
 or female births, were also in the ratio of the ages of the animals on both 
 sides. Thus, of the young ewes put to the young rams, the two-year old 
 ewes produced fourteen males and twenty-six females, the three-year old 
 gave sixteen males and twenty-nine females ; whereas the four- year old 
 ewes, to the aged rams, and on the poor pasture, produced thirty-three males 
 and fourteen females. 
 
 More than this is not known ; but there is quite sufficient to indicate that 
 the breeder possesses at least considerable power in controlling the propor- 
 tion of the sexes, and that the more vigor he has of frame and food the 
 greater will be the proportion of females ; and that the converse will hold 
 equally good. There is enough in the principle to deserve a trial. 
 
48 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DAIRY MANAGEMENT. 
 
 Of all kinds of food milk is one of the most important ; perhaps it is the 
 only one which contains within itself all the elements of food, and in such a 
 form as may be most easily assimilated, and rendered fit for the building up 
 a feeble and delicate structure. This nourishing substance, referring espe- 
 cially to the milk of the cow, contains a variety of proximate and ultimate 
 principles ; and every part of it is more or less useful in providing food for 
 mankind. In one or other of its forms it is in great request, either as a ne- 
 cessary of life, or an article of luxury. The young of our large and popu- 
 lous cities make it a considerable portion of their food ; in the shape of 
 cream, the almost universal consumption of tea and coffee has placed it on 
 the tables of the rich and the lowly. In the shape of butter it is again pre- 
 sent at our tables as a condiment to our bread, and an ingredient in our 
 pastry ; while as cheese it again appears either as part of the diet of the 
 poor, or a conclusion to the feast of the rich ; not to mention other produc- 
 tions which the cuisine art has taught mankind the use of, to pamper the ap- 
 petite and increase the means of luxurious gratification. 
 
 Milk consists chemicallj' of three parts ; — a watery portion, in which its 
 sugar and salts are dissolved ; an oily, and a solid and albuminous principle 
 it thus affords in turn a supply of the materials for replacing the waste of 
 the old, or constructing the new animal which partakes of it. The saline 
 and saccharine part forms at once the solids of the system, and the means of 
 sustaining animal heat ; the oleaginous furnishes the reservoir of fat, to be 
 available in times of adolescence or scarcity; while the albuminous part 
 gives the means of forming sinew and muscle. 
 
 A little before parturition, the new sympathies of the system cause the 
 niammiferous glands to swell and enlarge ; adolescent before, they now be- 
 come ready for energetic action ; and no sooner is the young brought forth, 
 than the aliment of nature is ready for the sustenance of the being which, 
 so short a time before, derived its subsistence from an internal, as it is now 
 preparing to do from an external source. 
 
 If the milk taken from the cow be allowed to stand in a shallow dish, 
 a change takes place in its appearance as soon as the cooling process begins. 
 A whitish-yellow substance, thicker than the milk, separates from it, and 
 swims on the top, forming an adhesive coat, covering the whole — this is the 
 cream, the richest part of the milk — leaving the mass below thinner, and 
 often of a bluish tinge, well known as skimmed, or blue milk. If the up- 
 per layer is examined by the microscope, it wiU be found to consist of a 
 
DAIET MANAGEMENT. 49 
 
 large accumulation of minute globules; these globules are the oily or 
 butyraceous parts of the milk, coated with a thin covering of a more solid 
 substance ; and this may be separated from the mass almost entire. Here 
 you have the greatest part of the butter, with some mixture of other mat- 
 ters. • The greatest part we say, for some of the globules of oil or fatty mat- 
 ter, are still suspended in the milky mass. 
 
 If the milk so skimmed is allowed to remain, a change takes place, more 
 or less rapid, according to the temperature. In hot weather this is very ra- 
 pid indeed. The albuminous or solid portion of the milk, is one which con- 
 tains an ammoniacal principle, and is liable to run very rapidly to decay. It 
 begins to ferment, and an acid is formed, which immediately joins the solid 
 parts of the milk by uniting with an alkali, which keeps the solid part of 
 the milk in a state of solution ; under these circumstances are formed two 
 substances, technically known as curds and whey. The solid portions are 
 distinctly developed, and fall down — these are the curds ; the watery par- 
 ticles in which they were before dissolved, are also determined, and become 
 the whey. 
 
 If these be now separated, the solid parts — acted upon by the changing 
 agency of the nitrogenous matter, having moisture, heat and air added — soon 
 show signs of putrefaction ; mouldiness and decay induce the deposit of the 
 eggs of innumerable insects, and the whole mass very soon becomes a heap 
 of putrefaction. If the whey, or watery part, is then suffered to ferment, 
 and this is exposed to sufficient heat and plenty of air, another kind of fer- 
 mentation will take place, and a slightly alcoholic drink will be produced 
 which is used for exhilarating or intoxicating purposes by some of the in- 
 habitants of the north-east of Asia. 
 
 As the separation of the cream from the milk does not take away all the 
 oily or butyraceous matter from the milk, neither does it remove the whole 
 of the solid (caseous) matter from the cream. The envelope of the oleagi- 
 nous globules is of this same albuminous and changing substance, and in this 
 by absorbing oxygen from the air, a change also takes place— curds and whey 
 are formed in the cream itself, but intermixed with a considerable quantity 
 of butter. This butter may be separated in various ways ; heat will send it 
 to the surface by breaking the enveloping globules of casein; but being 
 merely animal oil it has an insipid taste, and is very different from our table 
 butter. Agitation, with warmth, especially after incipient fermentation has 
 gone on, is the most effectual mode of breaking down the globules, byfrac- 
 tunng their enveloping skin, and this is the well known process of churnvng 
 of which we shall speak more fully in viewing the several dairy systems 
 
 Let It be remembered first of all, in considering the constituents of milk 
 
 that 1" f^VOT^T inn T^^n-fo i+ „^«+„: nw ___ ^ ^ . . . ' 
 
 every 100 parts it contains 87 parts of water, something more than 
 4j^arts of sugar, a little more than 3 parts of butter, something beyond one- 
 half part of saline matter, and i\ parts of cheesy matter (curd or casein) 
 
so 
 
 DAmr HUSBANDEY. 
 
 Its weight, from containing so many matters in suspension and solution, is 
 some three per cent, greater than that of water. The milk of different ani- 
 mals, however, contains different properties, and is different again according 
 to the hreed, food, and treatment of the animals. The following exhibits a 
 few of these differences : 
 
 Casein (curd) 
 
 Butter 
 
 Sugar 
 
 Salts 
 
 "Water 87.0 
 
 Cow. 
 4.5 . 
 3.1 . 
 4.8 . 
 0.6 . 
 
 Woman. 
 . 1.5 ... 
 . 3.6 ... 
 . 6.5 ... 
 . 0.5 ... 
 . 87.9 ... 
 
 Ass. 
 
 Ewe. 
 
 1.8 .. 
 
 ... 4.5 
 
 01 .. 
 
 ... 4.2 
 
 6.1 .. 
 
 ... 5.0 
 
 0.3 .. 
 
 ... 0.7 
 
 91.7 .. 
 
 ....85.6 
 
 Mare. 
 
 1.6 
 trace. 
 
 8.7 
 
 I 89.6 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 Now all dairy operations are aids for developing, or arresting, these natu- 
 ral changes of milk ; and if we give a faint outline here of the principles of 
 these processes, it will ver)' much assist in determining the relative value of 
 the different dairy systems when we come to details. 
 
 The object of the dairyman is sometimes to assist, and sometimes to retard 
 these natural stages of decomposition into which tlie milk will run when 
 left to itself; sometimes it is necessary to defer, sometimes to hasten these 
 stages, and he possesses great power for controlling them. Thus heat, it will 
 be seen, is necessary to all these stages of action. Hence in winter he can 
 easily arrest, and by artificial application as easily advance, the manipulations 
 of his craft. But in summer it is not so easy to control. He has often to be 
 in his dairy watching his milk under the influence of the sun's rays ; and he 
 contrives his dairy so as to keep out the hot rays of the sun as far as possi- 
 ble ; or he endeavors, by evaporation or profound shade, to counteract their 
 influence. 
 
 To begin with the new milk, it is by no means necessary that the cream 
 should be separated from the milk. If butter be the object, it can be attain- 
 ed without any separation of the cream. There are two modes of breaking 
 the globules of casein, one by the application of a gradually increasing gentle 
 heat to the new milk, until the buttery matter floats at the top, which is then 
 taken almost in a boiling state and churned to butter in a very few minutes. 
 The other is, by at once applying the beaters of the churn to the whole mass 
 of the milk ; but, as the bulk of liquid is so much greater in the latter case 
 than in the former, and skim-milk is of greater value than butter-mdlk, it is 
 much less frequently resorted to. 
 
 Generally the cream is allowed time to ferment. This process aids in 
 breaking down the structure of the enveloping skin, in precipitating the ca- 
 sein of the mass, and thus assisting the maturation and development o? the 
 butter. In churning, the heat of the mass rises from five to ten degrees, 
 
DAIRY MANAGEMENT. 51 
 
 and in Very cold weather it is sometimes necessary to pour in boiling water 
 in order (o obtain the necessary heat. This heat is also indispensable in se- 
 parating the cream. At a temperature nearly freezing it will rise with 
 diificulty ; perhaps the most regular and healthy temperature is 55°, but so 
 rapidly does it rise at 76° or 77° as to require great skill and watrhing to 
 prevent the whole of the mass becoming sour. At the first-named tempera- 
 ture it will be perfectly raised in twenty-four hours, and may be kept two 
 meals ; but in the latter state of the temperature it will be complete in ten 
 or twelve hours. As the globules have to rise by specific gravity chiefly, it 
 is desirable that the milk should be disposed in shallow dishes. Glass is 
 clean and beautiful, and porcelain is fashionable, but lead is the old-fashioned 
 and useful medium, retaining the heat of the hot water from the scalding 
 process in winter, and slowly conducting the heat after the cooling from eva- 
 poration after the same scalding in summer. The desirable temperature in 
 churning cream is 54° to 55°, a degree of heat preservable only in summer 
 by early churning, and in winter by raising the temperature by scalding the 
 churn before that process, with boiling water, heating the cream at the fire 
 before placing it in the churn, or by adding boiling water to the mass in the 
 churn. 
 
 Besides the matter we have alluded to as being present in milk, and con- 
 sequently in its 'Products, we must not omit the aroma of the food consumed 
 by the cow. In the case of turnips this is very distinct, and sometimes very 
 disagreeable, — causing even pastry to partake of the undesirable flavor. In 
 the spring of the year milk will even have a bitter taste, from the vigor 
 and freshness of the herbs consumed by the cows at that season ; but the 
 change from the insipidity of milk and butter produced by hay-fed animals 
 in winter is so great that even that is agreeable. 
 
 Immediately after calving the milk is thick and yellow ; in this state it is 
 called " beestings" or "beaslings ;" this is more abundant in casein or curd, 
 and on this account often forms part of the elements of the curd sold for the 
 purpose of making cheesecakes. Chevalier and Henri gave the composition 
 of these as follows :— Mucus, 2.0 ; butter, 2.6 ; casein, 15.0 ; water, 80.3. 
 The afterings or strippings, in other words the last milk taken from the ud- 
 der of the cow, are by far the most abundant both in cheese and butter 
 and hence some dairymen make it a practice always to strip their cows 
 themselves, even when the milking has been left to their servants. 
 
 We give two forms of a lactometer. This instrument is designed to test 
 the cream qualities of milk. Pour the milk into the tubes, and the 
 cream, when risen, will show how rich the milk is. The depth of cream will 
 be shown by the figures on the tubes. By the lactometer the difference in 
 the quality of the milk of different cows may be readily ascertained. 
 
 The qualities of cream vary much in the different breeds, depending on 
 the modes of management, as well as the food. Thus, in some experiments 
 
62 
 
 DAIRY H0SBANDRT. 
 
 made, it required twelve quarts from a short-horn ^ cow to produce one 
 pound of butter — something like a day's supply of milk ; while nine and a 
 
 LACTOMETERS. 
 
 half quarts of an Ayrshire cow's would give the same quantity ; but it is often 
 very variable in the same animal at different periods, and diflFerent animals 
 of the same breed will produce very different results both in cream and 
 butter. 
 
 The churning operation is usually most successful when somewhat 
 speedily performed. Though 55° may be the most desirable heat, it some- 
 
DAIRY MANAGEMENT. 53 
 
 times require more. If the cows of the dairy have all been long calved, 
 and the weather be cold and stormy, the operation becpmes long and pro- 
 tracted ; and when ten and twelve, and even fourteen hours, have been con- 
 sumed in churning, not a few charms have been invented to hasten it. Usu- 
 ally, however, if briskly turned, it will be effectual in twenty minutes. 
 The first sign of butter is when the caseous matter is separating from the 
 butyraceous. The brisk motion requisite to produce this state of things 
 must now be softened, when the small particles of butter begin to adhere to 
 each other ; then the butter-milk must be partially let off, and the gathering 
 process, which will continue for ten minutes more, will be complete. 
 
 The butter, however, is still in a state far from being fit for use. It con- 
 tains much of the cheesy matter, and repeated washings in cold water are 
 necessary to secure its removal. If this should not be carefully done, the 
 butter will soon become rancid. The tendency in the caseous matter to 
 decay will induce its speedy decomposition, and the formation of a variety 
 of substances, especially butyric acid, which has a most disagreeable smell. 
 For the same reason, it is essentially necessary to observe the utmost clean- 
 liness in the dairy. Fresh beef placed in a basket or in a room where beef 
 has been in a state of decay before, will soon putrefy ; and a very little pu- 
 trefied milk spilled upon the ground, or left in the churn, the pail, or the 
 bowl, will soon so communicate itself to the whole of the milk and cream 
 in the dairy as to spoil churning after churning of the butter it contains. 
 
 Professor Trail made several experiments with the different modes oJ 
 churning. He tried the churning of fresh cream, of fresh milk, of soured 
 milk and cream together, and of the scalded cream ; the results of these ex- 
 periments were not very different from what had been previously taught. 
 His results were, first, that the addition of cold water to thick cream in hot 
 weather assisted the churning by facilitating the separation of the butter ; 
 then, that cream alone, in whatever state, churned with more facility than 
 when mixed with milk ; that butter from fresh cream is the finest, and 
 keeps the best, but the butter-milk from this is somewhat poorer ; that the 
 scalding of the cream, after the Devonshire method before alluded to, yields 
 the largest quantity of butter, but requires immediate jjse, as it soon becomes 
 rancid ; his last remark is, that the most economical mode is to allow the 
 cream to be' soured, or fermented, as it is sometimes called — though it is a 
 change which is not strictly fermentative — because, by this process, it yields 
 the largest quantity of butter, and the butter-milk is also the best. 
 
 Circumstances, as well as peculiarity in the management, will have great 
 influence on the flavor of the butter. Thus, where calves are fatted for 
 veal, there is often the best butter. The calves are allowed to suck the 
 cows before the milk is taken for the dairy. In this case, the calves get the 
 solid and saccharine part of the milk, and the dairyman gets all the after- 
 ings j and hence he gets a large quantity and a rich quality of butter. The 
 
54 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 Bretagne butter, so celebrated in France, owes its peculiar qualities to the 
 mode of its manufacture. It is in such demand that it becomes a manufac- 
 turing process ; and hence it is made in large quantities — a circumstance al- 
 ways favorable to the quality of butter. The process followed with this 
 butter is as follows : after churning and washing, the butter is steeped or 
 sprinkled plentifully with new milk, and kneaded into cylindrical cakes, and 
 placed, for a few minutes, in a sort of covered frying pan, with heated coke 
 both below and above. It is then taken out, and is fit for immediate use. 
 The flavor is peculiar, and the butter particularly rich in flavor. 
 
 The real secret of butter-making it appears to us is, so to arrange the 
 temperature of the dairy, and the chum, as just to maintain the requisite de- 
 gree for thoroughly separating the cream j but not so great as to render the 
 whole over sour. If too cold, the butter will separate badly, the churning 
 will be long and tedious, the butler full of breaks, pale in colour, and brittle 
 in texture ; and if, on the contrary, it is too. hot, it will be light and oily. It is 
 also essential that the cows should not have calved too long. This will re- 
 tard the churning process, and have a tendency to make the butter both bit- 
 ter and unpleasant. Perhaps the best butter will be made from one half 
 soured cream and the remainder fresh. Enough of the lactic acid will be 
 formed in this portion to facilitate the churning, and enough caseous matter 
 will be left in the other to prevent ifB being tasteless. 
 
 If butter has to be kept, means must be adopted for its preservation. The 
 souring change soon proceeds ; the butyraceous matter changes also into 
 several disagreeably smelling acids. The first mode of preservation is by 
 salting. If it is to be removed far, it may be necessary also to pack it away, 
 and exclude the air. Hence, when it is made on a large scale, it is put in 
 firkins, or casks, holding from 40 to 70 pounds, which are carefully fast- 
 ened up by the cooper so as to exclude the air. Salt is well known to have 
 the power of preventing animal matter from falling into the putrefactive 
 state, by means of its peculiar antiseptic power, preventing the caseous mat- 
 ter-of the butter from becoming putrid, and running on in its course of decay. 
 But such is the aflinity of salt for the moisture of the atmosphere, that the 
 outer portions of the butter soon become subject to the changes which con- 
 tact with the atmosphere produces ; in order, therefore, to keep it for any 
 length of time, it must either be covered with a saturated solution of salt, or 
 with a syrup of sugar, which has the same effect ; otherwise it must be 
 placed in air-tight, or nearly air-tight casks, having the top and bottom 
 dredged with salt. In fact, the more moisture is attracted from fhe atmo- 
 sphere, the more closely will the wood of the cask adhere, and vice versa; 
 a very important means of preservation is thus afforded to the dairyman, 
 and to the inhabitants of our large towns, for without this, even with all our 
 facilities for railway transit, it is difficult to conceive how a constant supply 
 could be maintained. The firkins made in summer are opened in winter ; 
 
BAIRY MANAGEMENT. 55 
 
 and though not so rich in their contents as the fresh products from the dairy, 
 they form a second-rate class of butter, by no means disagreeable. 
 
 When these are opened for use, a very free washing should be given them, 
 to wash out the soluble lactic acid; and the butter should afterwards be well 
 washed, and kneaded in new milk. This gives it much freshness and flavor, 
 which improves and renders it, if well made and packed, much more pleas- 
 ant than some of the turnip-flavored fresh butter made in winter. 
 
 When once the rancid taste has been acquired, it is never again fit for the 
 table ; but it maybe so purified as to be by no means useless for pastry pur- 
 poss. The disagreeable acids are all, to a certain extent, soluble in water. 
 Butter should, therefore, be placed, in clear fresh spring water, over a slow 
 fire, and kept there until the water boils. This will evaporate, wash out, 
 and volatilize the acids. It may then be skimmed ofl^, and again put in 
 fresh cold water, again to undergo the boiling process. If after this it be 
 washed thoroughly, it will be found free from any bad effects upon pastry, 
 but very insipid, and unfit for the table. 
 
 As to the form of churn there may be a variety of opinions. The ulti- 
 mate object is to secure that form, which will facilitate a rapid, steady, and 
 shaking pressure of the contents ; and this is efiected either by a flapper, 
 driven through the cream, at a considerable rate, by means of a piston with 
 a perforated base ; by a perpendicular motion, raised up and down in a cylin- 
 drical or similarly formed v«ssel ; or, what is more common, and by no 
 means the worst form of churn, a cylinder studded with perforated beaters, 
 fastened to its inner surface, and revolving round its two axles, admitting of 
 one handle or two, according to the quantity of the cream. By this means 
 the specific gravity of the cream, as well as the force and impetus of the ma- 
 chine, are both brought into play to excite the heat, the pressure, and the 
 agitation necessary to the proper and speedy development of the butter. To 
 
 
 / 
 
 EAEEEL CHUEN. 
 
 this horse or steam power may be easily attached, and though there have 
 
56 DAIRY HUSBANDRT. 
 
 been many forms of chum in use, we are not certain that any very great 
 improvement on the above form has so far been discovered. Plans have 
 been adopted to diminish the labor, but this has often ended in defective op- 
 eration. The American and the table churns, available for the extempo- 
 raneous manufacture of butter every morning for the tables of the rich, are 
 so far a step in advance, and a luxury ; but for the large operation of the 
 dairy.farmer, a better application than the chum of his forefathers has not 
 
 BARREL CHUaN WITH THEKMOMETEE ATTACHED. 
 
 yet been discovered. We give a sketch of useful kinds of modern chums. 
 These are essentially the same. Into the wood of the larger one is let a 
 thermometer, and it is in contact with the cream, and indicates temperature. 
 
 The principles of cheese-making are, in many respects, those applied to the 
 manufacture of butter ; but the object being to a certain extent different, 
 they apply in a different manner. The production of the different kinds of 
 cheese will more appropriately come out in the details of dairy management 
 in the different localities, to which we shall have occasion to refer ; but they 
 all center in the artificial development of the cheesy water (casein) of the 
 milk, whether the milk be new or that from which the cream has been 
 taken, termed skim milk. 
 
 It has been stated that, if left to itself, lactic acid, into which 'the sugar of 
 milk is changed, soon begins to form, in circumstances of air and tempera- 
 ture favorable to its development. If to this mixture heat is applied, so as 
 to contract the caseous matter, we should have genuine curd, fit for the man- 
 ufacture of cheese ; but the cheese would be unpalatable, brittle, and hard, 
 and the process too slow for the purposes of commerce. Hence some sub- 
 
bAIRY MANAGEMENT. 
 
 61 
 
 stance is required to facilitate the change. Lactic acid, natural or artificially 
 added, will combine with the soda, which holds the casein in solution, and 
 form lactate of soda. Here the acid will, with the addition of a little heiit, 
 be developed. For this purpose various means may be adopted. The most 
 common is the addition, in some form or other, of the very substance nature 
 has herself provided, for the abstraction of the casein, i.e. the stomach of the 
 calf, or some mammalian, generally a ruminating animal. The stomach of 
 the calf curdles the milk in its natural state ; and often this curdled milk, the 
 contents of the calf's stomach — ^the animal having had first a full meal of 
 milk given to it — is withdrawn and used to produce the change in the milk 
 intended for cheese. The idea seems neither pleasant nor cleanly, nor is it 
 necessary. The stomach itself, if well washed, chopped to pieces, and 
 steeped in water for several months, — as many as twelve being in many 
 cases advised — and reduced either to a liquid, or powder, or even the skin 
 itself, is equally potent in effecting the coagulation of the milk. The notion 
 that it is the gastric juice of the stomach which curdles the milk, though it 
 will doubtless have that effect, is exploded by Professor Johnston, who satis- 
 factorily shows that the change must result from some acid in the structure 
 of the rennet itself, and not merely from the gastric juice, especially in the 
 cases where it is considered necessary that it should remain for twelve 
 months steeped in water before being fit for user The rennet, however, is not 
 the only material used for striking the curd, or hastening the coagulation of the 
 casein. In some cases muriatic acid is used. This acid ■ transfers the alkali 
 of the milk into common salt (muriate of soda) ; being diluted with water, 
 it has the same effect as the rennet. Vinegar, tartaric acid, alum, and even 
 occasionally milk, are all used with success ; each having in it acid enough 
 to effect the purpose, under favorable circumstances. A considerable part 
 of the fatty matter of the milk will, of course, unite with the curd ; but 
 some will remain with the liquid, or whey, as it must now be called. In 
 the case of whole or new milk cheese, the whole of the milk immediately 
 it is taken from the cow and passed through a fine sieve, is subjected to the 
 action of the rennet. In cases when a full meal of milk will not produce a 
 cheese, the milk of the evening is reserved_till the morning, both added to- 
 gether, and the rennet poured upon the mass. As something like 95° is the 
 heat at which coagulation, and contraction of the curd, is performed with the 
 greatest rapidity, the milk should be raised to about that degree. If more 
 heat than this is given, the cheese will be tough and waxy ; if less, there 
 is some difficulty, owing to its softness, in separating the cheesy from the 
 watery matter. In cold weather a small quantity of hot water has to be 
 added to the new milk with the rennet ; but if much water is added, or the 
 temperature interfered with more than is necessary, it injures the quality df 
 the cheese. 
 The next process is the cutting of this curd, to separate it from the whey, 
 3* 
 
58 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 and this is a manipulation which requires care on the part of the operator. 
 If done rudely or rapidly, it will burst the mass and press out the buty- 
 raceous particles ; but it must not be delayed after the curd is formed, or-the 
 whey will obtain more than its legitimate share of the butter. The process 
 of draining away the whey held in loose attraction by the curd, b to cut it 
 in pieces and lay it on a strainer ; then by the application of slight and 
 equable pressure to take away the remaining whey. As little force should 
 be used as possible at first j but as the first portion of whey has drained off, 
 the curd will acquire more power to retain the fatty matter. Forty or fifty 
 pounds weight will be as much as it can bear at the commencement of the 
 process. 
 
 Nearly the whole secret of cheese-making depends upon thoroughly drain- 
 ing off the whey. This carries off the sugary matter of the milk, the lactic 
 acid, and perhaps the rennet as well ; and these substances are so liable to 
 undergo changes, that cheese-making altogether depends upon this process 
 being properly attended to. In some places even the curd is washed ; for, 
 beyond the danger of washing out a little butyraceous matter, little injury 
 would be sustained compared to the loss incurred, if the cheese were suffered 
 to retain any considerable portion of the whey besides ; as butter is some- 
 times churned from this whey, the loss is made up to the dairy-man, if not 
 to the consumer, in another way. 
 
 So powerful is the tendency of the albuminous matter of the casein, to 
 putrefy, that even cheese itself will not keep unless the salting process in one 
 shape or another is adopted. This is performed in the manner most favor- 
 able to the production of the peculiar kind of cheese for which a district may 
 be famous, and is either added to the curd, or rubbed in after the cheese is 
 made and strained ; for such is the affinity of salt for moisture, that it will 
 soon permeate the whole mass of the cheese, and preserve the casein from 
 putrefaction by its peculiar antiseptic qualities. The next process is that of 
 drying or turning ; but as these are matters of detail which will come under . 
 view shortly, they need not be described here. The only remaining sub- 
 jects requiring notice, are the general care and attention necessary to be ex- 
 ercised in order to keep up the character of the cheeses of a district, what- 
 ever the peculiarities of manufacture may be. 
 
 If scrupulous, nay fastidious cleanliness, be necessary in the process of 
 butter-making, it is equally necessary for the making of cheese. The flavor 
 of a cheese may be much more easily destroyed even than that of butter. 
 Decaying matter in the dairy will send out its sporules, undefinable even by 
 the microscope, and infect the whole place with its miasmatic influence. And 
 so long as the dairy is not a separate room in the house, kept aloof from the 
 food of the family, from the decay and putrefaction of animal and vegetable 
 matter, kept apart from the performance of household work, and in the most 
 absolute state of cleanliness, there will be injury and loss to the dairyman. 
 
LONDON DAIRY SYSTEM. 
 
 69 
 
 If the towls, and dishes, and pails, and coolers, are not assiduonsly cleaned 
 and scalded, so as to destroy all remains offermentation and putrefaction, the 
 whole dairy operations of the year, at least such part of the year as succeeds 
 these violations, may be rendered unprofitable. 
 
 SELF-ACTING CHEESE PRESS. 
 
 Allusion has been made to the taste of turnips inseparable from the milk 
 and butter of cows fed on that root. As the bulk of the cheese is made in 
 summer, the remark does not so far apply to cheese ; but it is not unapt to 
 obtain a flavor from any herbs upon which the cow may have especially fed- 
 This aroma of the milk may be often removed by the addition of a little 
 saltpetre ; and a few drops of chloride of lime are recommended to remove 
 entirely the taste of turnips. A little prudence, however, will generally ob- 
 viate the injury arising from any special kind of food, with which the cows 
 may at any time be fed. 
 
 The inoculation of cheese is one of the refinements of modern taste and 
 luxury. A blue mould is by some considered the sine qua non of a tasty 
 cheese ; while others prefer the decay to be gray, and the cheese to be in a 
 state of putrefaction so absolute as to be soft and wet, — a nest for mites and 
 jumpers or skippers. 
 
 If it be desired to give to a cheese, the flavor peculiar to one of its kind, it 
 
60 DAIRY HUSBANDET. 
 
 may easily be accomplished. A dozen holes may be made in the specimen 
 to be operated upon, with the common cheese trier, and the pieces taken 
 away. The same trier may cut as many pieces out of the favorite cheese, 
 and insert them in the places from which the others were removed. This, 
 covered up in a close place for a month will, if free from mould before, turn 
 out absolutely ripe, and of the same flavor as the cheese from wliich it was 
 inoculated ; always premising that the mouldering process had not first set 
 in in the inoculated subject. 
 
 The cheese press, of which the accompanying is a cut, is called the self-act- 
 ing press. It is so constructed that by means of two pair of double acting 
 levers, the cheese presses itself by its own weight, and in a ten fold propor- 
 tion to the weight of the cheese. Thus, if a cheese weigh twenty pounds, 
 it will exert a constant pressure on itself of two hundred, and whenever a 
 greater pressure is required, weights are added, and for every pound added, a 
 power of ten pounds is gained. 
 
 THE LONDON HAIRY SYSTEM, AND THAT OF GREAT TOWNS. 
 
 The Dairy systems of this country resolve themselves into three: provid- 
 ing supplies of milk for the population of our large towns, which are becom- 
 ing every year more important and extensive ; the making of cheese to suit 
 the various tastes of our population, who may be said to use it almost to a 
 man, in a greater or less degree ; and the production of butter, almost as ex- 
 tensively used by the bulk of our population. Of all the large towns in the 
 kingdom, the supply for the population of London is the most important mat- 
 ter : and so great were the secrets of a London establishment deemed, that 
 it was the greatest difficulty Mr. Youatt, when writing his Treatise on 
 British Cattle, could gain the information he required ; for access to the 
 dairies in London was absolutely refused, though in the country he had but 
 to ask to obtain assistance, and even hospitality. Those who take a strong 
 view of the adulterations of milk will attribute this to a dread of exposure; 
 but it may very readily be believed that the joint-stock dairies, which at one 
 time threatened to swamp the trade of the private dealers, might have some 
 reason for a wish to keep their secrets to themselves. Whatever may have 
 been the cause, it must be admitted we know hardly anything about the 
 London dairies but what is furnished by Youatt's authority — we mean that 
 of Mr. Laycock's and Mr. Rhodes's establishments. The number of cows 
 he gives in 1834 at 12,000 ; but although London has increased since the 
 period when Mr. Youatt wrote, at least one-fourth, we should be surprised 
 if the increase of daiiy-cows had been very great — if they have even in- 
 creased at all ! The railway system has introduced a completely new mode 
 of supplying our large towns with milk. The very notion of a milk 
 establishment in a large town at all, has in itself become an anomaly. To 
 carry large herds of cows amongst over-crowded streets ! To get to them 
 
LONDON DAIRY SYSTEM. 61 
 
 their food, and to convey away their manure, to obtain litter, and air, and 
 water was no ordinary difficulty. But it was a difficulty short of the trans- 
 port of milk from a distance. The railway system has brought fresh milk 
 from the country in less time, and with less injury, for a distance of twenty 
 miles round London, than used to be incurred in conveying it from the milk- 
 man to the consumer. But the railways have also cheapened the food. The 
 environs of great towns have not now the monopoly of the sale. Clover 
 and turnips are brought thirty and even forty miles, with much more ra- 
 pidity, and are much fresher, than formerly when the distance was only 
 seven; and, though they are sold by the pound, they are much cheapened 
 compared with what they were, even ten years ago. The monopoly has 
 been spread over a much greater surface. The somewhat large sum of £82 
 per cow was given as an estimate of her produce per annum, as obtained by 
 the retail dealer ; and the gross sum expended in milk and cream in London, 
 at nearly one million sterling. Not a large sum per head for the population, 
 nor a large sum for the wholesale dealers and retailers, when the art, the 
 labor, the time, and, above all, the expenses of food and rent, are taken*into 
 consideration. 
 
 The milk is sold by the dairymen to the middlemen retailers. These take 
 off the cream, and mix it with water for sale, boil the skim-milk, and sell 
 it warm from the fire. There is no such thing as new milk in London ; it 
 is all boiled skim-milk. Mr. Rhodes's establishment, one of the largest in 
 London, stands on an area of some two and a half acres of ground, which 
 has a gentle slope towards the east. The cow-houses are in a line with this 
 slope, and are furnished with drains behind, and a long trough before ; in the 
 one their food and water are allowed to run, and down the other their drop- 
 pings and drainings discharge themselves. The stalls are arranged on each 
 side of the gutter. These stalls are double ; two cows being placed in each, 
 and having each cow a manger eind a covered water-trough let into the wall. 
 The cow-houses are twenty-four feet wide and eight feet high, lighted with 
 glass, and well ventilated. Of these cow-houses there are four long rows, 
 and at the bottom is a quadrangular yard, surrounded by somewhat similar 
 sheds, partly used for feeding the dry cows and partly for keeping pigs, 
 which feed on the refuse food of the animals. Four or five hundred cows, 
 which are usually kept in the establishment, supply milk, varying with cir- 
 cumstances, and sometimes, of course, beyond the demand ; where this is the 
 case the milk is skimmed, and given to the pigs — being placed in a large 
 souring cistern ; and this, as well as the grains which may be left after the 
 cows have been fed, are almost their exclusive sustenance. Near this 
 quadrangle is the dunghill, after the American fashion ; a plan of all others 
 the most desirable in a large town, being so much excluded from the air, and 
 affording the best oppprtunities for its innocuous removal. The cows are 
 never loosed, so long as they are inilkeis. They usually come in from York- 
 
62 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 shire or Durham, and are all newly calved. They are fed mostly on grains 
 and hay. Sometimes, as we said before, clover and grass, tares and mangel 
 are brought from a distance ; but the system of feeding on fermented and 
 preserved brewer's grains, is more or less general, because they are known 
 to have the most wonderful effect in promoting the secretion of milk. 
 Those of the ale brewers are preferred to the porter brewers, and they are 
 preserved in a pit sunk in the establishment, lined with brick and cement, 
 trodden down and kept air-tight. An incipient vinous fermentation takes 
 place, which runs into acetous, and the whole mass is soured, the same as 
 the milk was for the pigs, but with this difference, that in the one case the 
 air is freely admitted, but in the latter case it is carefully excluded. Here 
 keeping is said to improve the grains ; and months, and even years, are per- 
 mitted to elapse before they are consumed. Of these the cows get about a 
 bushel per day. Hay in winter, and fares and cut-grass in summer, eke 
 out their soured grains, with a daily allowance of salt, keeping them in high 
 condition ; and they will give, on an average, nine quarts of milk per day ; 
 if they do not give this quantity, or within one quart, they are at once con- 
 demned. Mangel wurzel, turnips in small quantities, and even potatoes, are 
 given in winter. The change from the open air to the cow-houses of London 
 is very great. It might be supposed that it would have a ruinous effect on 
 their health and condition. But this is not the ease. They are usually con- 
 fined only for eight or ten months; and this is not long enough to produce 
 much damage. The change in their food, also, is rather favorable than 
 otherwise ; and the currying of the skins, which is universally adopted, has 
 a very beneficial tendency in overtoming the want of exercise. The cows, 
 when they cease to be milkers, are generally sold to the distillers, though 
 some dairymen keep and breed from the best specimens. The general sys- 
 tem, however, is to sell them off; and for this reason the Yorkshire cow is 
 so generally the favorite in the London dairies, because she is of more value 
 for fattening than almost any other, and gives a larger proportion of milk, 
 although it be of a less nourishing and poorer quality. 
 
 In the establishment to which we have alluded, and at the end opposite 
 to the pig-houses, is the suite of rooms used for the dairy. Here are three 
 rooms — a measuring room, where the milk is measured to the retailers, an 
 inner or scalding room, where the vessels are kept and washed, and which 
 is furnished with a boiler and tables, and the inner room, or dairy, for the 
 unsold milk. The retailers usually milk the cows themselves, at four 
 o'clock in the morning, and three in the afternoon. They take the produce 
 of one, two, three, or more cows, according to the demands of their custom- 
 ers ; but have their supply either added to, by the dairyman, from the pro- 
 duce of other milch cows, or they pass over the quantity they do not require, 
 if they have procured more milk than they have demand for. The 
 daiiyman makes butter of the surplus milk, and gives the skim milk either 
 
LIVERPOOL DAIRY SYSTEM. 63 
 
 to feeding, or, more generally, to breeding and store pigs, soured as has been 
 described. 
 
 THE LIVEEPOOL DAIEY SYSTEM 
 
 Is different from that of London, because it is more connected with the 
 farming operations around that town, and we cannot select for remark any- 
 thing so complete in that neighborhood — if indeed anything in the country is 
 half so perfect — as the system of Mr. Littledale, of Lisceard. His dairy, though 
 much smaller than the London one we have named, is carried on with a 
 spirit that rather reminds us of Mr. Harley, at Glasgow, who remodeled 
 the whole dairy system of towns, than anything else with which it can be 
 compared. Mr. Littledale's farm, of 350 acres, is made subservient to this 
 purpose, and his farm buildings were specially erected for the purpose of 
 carrying out the system ; they cover about four statute acres. His cattle 
 occupy three cow houses, or, as he calls them provincially, " shipons," and 
 are arranged in parallel lines, with yards between, one holding sixteen, an- 
 other twenty-eight, and another thirty-two cows. From these, drains pro- 
 ceed into liquid manure tanks, and the cattle are tied by the head, in a stall 
 after the London fashion. His farm grows mangel wurzel, turnips, potatoes, 
 and green food for his cows, and he also feeds a large number of pigs, as an 
 auxiliary to his dairy. The stalls in the cow-house are partitioned with 
 blue Welsh flags, connected with iron rods, and each animal is furnished 
 with an iron manger. 
 
 A passage before the head of each row of cows, which is single in each 
 cow-house, enables the feeder to supply them with their food without dis- 
 turbing the animals ; and they are never taken from their stalls either for 
 food or exercise. The whole of the cow-houses are laid also with Welsh 
 tiles, and an open drain runs behind the cows, furnished with stench traps, 
 to convey the liquid to the tanks we spoke of, by the covered drains from 
 the cow-houses. There is no provision for the conveyance of water, for 
 being fed so largely on roots, they require but a small quantity, and what 
 they require is carried in pails. In addition to this green food, Mr. Little- 
 dale uses a large quantity of grains from the brewery, and gives boiled lin- 
 seed, as an auxiliary to his roots and green food. His cattle are curried and 
 brushed regularly, and as regularly fed, and though they are, as we said, 
 never loosed from their stalls, they are remarkably sleek and healthy, and 
 free from many of the epidemics which so commonly prevail throughout 
 ^he dairy county in which he lives — the county of Chester. The ventila- 
 tion is attended to by means of open-paled weather-boarded ventilators at 
 the top of the cow-houses, by which he is able to regulate the temperature. 
 
 The dairy is a very completely arranged building, the floor is laid in ce- 
 ment, and there are two large sycamore tables, one on each side, and one of 
 
ef4 DAIRY HUSBANDKT. 
 
 marble at the end, with three large, hut shallow, octagon leaden milk-bowls 
 in the center. The walls are lined with glazed StafTordshire-ware tiles, and 
 the roof has in it a large ventilator. The walls, which are exposed to the 
 north, are built hollow, having a three-inch aperture, which communicates 
 with the space between a double ceiling, which covers the building, and this 
 gives an ample command of low temperature in summer, — a higher one in 
 winter being easily obtained. The milk, when cool, is placed in glass milk- 
 pans, and is brought from the cow-house in sycamore pails. The churn is 
 of the old-fashioned cylindrical form, it is made so as to be worked by his 
 steam engine, and will chum eighty gallons of cream at one charge. To 
 make this into butter, under favorable circumstances, it requires but some 
 eight or nine minutes. 
 
 Though, as may be supposed, profit is not the entire object of the spirited 
 proprietor, there is no doubt but his proximity to Liverpool renders his pro- 
 duce both in milk and butter worth a large sum ; and as he grows so large a 
 quantity of green crops, and uses these to produce the paying article — dairy 
 produce — he is enabled to grow large quantities of corn as a consequence. 
 ' Somewhat similar to this was Mr. Harley's dairy, near Glasgow ; he kept 
 260 cows, closely tied by the head ; kept them oy soiling, and showed the 
 milkmen of Glasgow that he could obtain as much milk by one acre soiled, 
 to house-kept cows, as five would produce if the cows were allowed to 
 roam at large. If we take into account the quantity soiled with their ex- 
 crements, and rendered unfit for food, the unequal manner in which they eat 
 the pasture, which allows much to ma to straw, while some is eaten so 
 close to the ground as almost to injure the roots, the quantity trodden down 
 and destroyed by the cattle lying upon it during the night, and contrast this 
 with the cleanliness, the sweetness, the freshness, of such as have food 
 brought to them, we need not wonder at the statement. The preservation 
 of the whole of the liquid manure, enables a dressing of that fertilizing ma- 
 terial to be applied to the grass after every cutting, so as to make the most 
 of the productiveness of the soil. A great quantity of this is doubtless saved, 
 which would otherwise volatilize and evaporate. 
 
 Perhaps a stronger contrast to the good management of these spirited men 
 cannot be offered than the adulteration of milk, unhappily practiced in othert 
 of our large towns, and so extensively carried on, that it is doubtful whether 
 some of our population ever taste such an article as the pure milk of the 
 cow. Allusion was made before to the mixing with water so generally 
 practiced, and to the partial or total abstraction of the cream before the milk 
 is sold to the consumers. This of course makes it blue and thin ; and the 
 least objectionable and most simple resource to disguise the fraud, is to boil 
 it, to thicken the consistency, and improve the flavor. But far more equiv- 
 ocal modes are adopted. Sometimes sheep's and calves' brains are mixed 
 
PRESERVATION OF MILK. 65 
 
 with it, which render it thick and rich in appearance, and make an apparent 
 rising of cream to the surface ; nor is this adulteration easy of detection. 
 
 Very old adulterants are chalk and flour, so common a few years ago as to 
 obtain for town milk the significant name of " whiting ;" this mixture pre- 
 served the milk sweet for a longer period, thus enabling the adulterator to 
 take off more of the cream. It became thin, however, by standing, and de- 
 posited a sediment, and thus was liable to detection. An improvement in 
 this trick is to adulterate with boiled paste and sugar — a permanent thick- 
 ness and sweetness is thus given, and it is less easy of detection than raw 
 flour, but is recognizable by the test of iodine. Starch has the same effect, 
 but is liable to the same process of detection ; the white of eggs is also some- 
 times made use of to thicken the mass. 
 
 A refinement on all these modes is to mix the milk with an emulsion of 
 almonds, and even of hemp-seed ; indeed, it is questionable if milk itself is 
 not absolutely manufactured of this and some other ingredients. Some fif- 
 teen quarts of water may be made to resemble milk for less than a shilling ; 
 and if a little milk is added, the deception will be complete. Hemp-seed 
 emulsion has very much the same effect, but is more easily detected by its 
 acrid taste ; but this may be removed by a sugar, or sugar-candy mixture. 
 Raspail detected both these as thickening matter for skimmed milk in Paris ; 
 and the reseaches of Mr. Berruel showed that the deceptive effect, especially 
 of the almond mixture, was nearly complete. It would be tedious to repeat 
 all the tests for these adulterations ; when they are suspected it will be far 
 the best to carry them to an experienced chemist, and the exposure of the 
 parties in a few instances in the public prints would be far more effectual in 
 arresting the villainous process than any personal manipulation, which could 
 not carry the same weight with the public. As a public duty this ought to 
 be done, as the mischief as well as the disgusting nature of the practice 
 should at once be arrested. 
 
 PHESEEVATION OP MILK. 
 
 This is by no means an easy measure. It is of materials so protean in 
 their character, that to attempt to preserve, must so discompose or transmute 
 their qualities, that the mixture ceases to be milk. There are, however 
 many inducements to preserve this invaluable luxury, if it be possible, even 
 for the purpose of transmission from the interior of the country to the large 
 towns ; but this can only be effected by preventing the formation of the lac- 
 tic acid, or the vinous fermentation of the mass ; and by preventing the de- 
 composition of the sensitive casein. We must therefore either lock up both 
 these principles — the saccharine and caseous materials — by some strong al- 
 finity, or we must exclude air and warmth, to effect our purpose. In Hol- 
 land the milk is mixed with carbonate of magnesia, which thickens it, and 
 
66 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 prevents it from souring; this, or some other alkaline mixture, will doubt- 
 less preserve it for a short period, especially in winter, by forming a salt 
 with the lactic acid, as it is developed, and by keeping the casein in a state 
 of solution. Fifteen grains of the carbonate in a quart of milk will not give 
 it any very unpleasant taste, and will certainly prevent its acidulation and 
 curdling. Carbonate of soda will have a similar effect, and it is thought by 
 some to improve the tendency of the cream to separate from the miik. 
 Possibly the reason is, that with the soda it can be kept so much longer, and 
 thus give it a better cliance of rising. 
 
 Another plan is to place the new milk in bottles, and insert them in a pan 
 on the fire, immersed in cold water, until the water boils. The air in the 
 bottles thus becomes rarefied, and, if corked up hot, will be kept for a con- 
 siderable time in a state of comparative freshness, to be used immediately 
 the bottles are opened. The addition of a few grains of carbonate of soda, 
 will of course much improve its keeping qualities. It should also after this 
 be kept as cool as possible. 
 
 M, Adepert's method is a step beyond this. He recommends the milk to 
 be subjected to a heat so gentle that the great bulk of the purely watery 
 parts are evaporated ; then to be closely corked up. This, of course, has a 
 much stronger tendency to resist decomposition than if the whole of the 
 watery particles remained, and if it were boiled in the bottles in which it 
 was to be finally corked up, and this done during the hot state, as in the in- 
 stance above, and a small addition of soda made, it might keep in a palatable 
 state for a considerable period, — not indeed to compete with newly-produced 
 milk, but to be a luxury on board a ship far out at sea, without any fresh 
 supply of that nutritious article. Duchofl', a Russian chemist, went even 
 beyond Adepert, and his scheme professes to be perfect, furnishing a supply 
 of milk for any length of time, and to use at pleasure. It is by forming es- 
 sentially a milk powder. He proposes to evaporate by a slow fire the 
 whole of the watery matter from the milk, and thus have a solid and pul- 
 verulent mass, which may be kept in a small compass in a bottle, and when 
 required be dissolved in a proper quantity of water. Now, as milk contains 
 water in the ratio of nearly nine-tenths of its substance, it may, doubtless, 
 be much reduced in compass, and made capable of being produced extempo- 
 raneously at pleasure ; this would supply a great desideratum. It is ex- 
 tremely doubtful, however, if it would retain much of the taste of milk, 
 how much soever it might retain its nourishing qualities. 
 
 THE OPEEATION OF MILKING 
 
 Is ONE which has more to do with the success of dairy management than 
 is generally supposed. It must be performed carefully, thoroughly, and 
 kindly. The cow must be educated to give her milk freely, and this can 
 only be accomplished by a system of kind treatment when she is a heifer, 
 
OPERATION OF MILKING. 67 
 
 and has produced her first calf. Many a cow physiologically capahle of being 
 a good milker, is spoiled at the very outset by unskillful treatment. The 
 new sympathies and sensations of the mother are very decided and very 
 painful. The vessels of the udder are strained and sore, and a rough and 
 brutal treatment of her at this time, will stamp her as a vicious cow for ever. 
 She will hold back her milk, become a hard milker, and will thus, by keep- 
 ing the contents in her udder, meal after meal, soon run ofi" her milk, and 
 become prematurely dry. Nothing can be more utterly injudicious than the 
 mode adopted by too many dairymen, of taking away the calf the moment 
 it is dropped, to prevent the mother from seeing it lill she cannot distinguish 
 it as her own. A greater violence done to common sense cannot be im- 
 agined. The udder is distended and painful ; and nothing is so calculated to 
 soothe and relieve it, as the mucous covering of the mouth of the offspring ; 
 nor will anything be so grateful to the mother, or cause her so readily to 
 give up her milk with ease and facility in milking. At first the teats are 
 gummed up by a glutinous sort of cork ; this should be removed with the 
 hand carefully, or by the application of warm water. A little of the beest- 
 ings should be milked into the hand and rubbed on the teats and udder ; and 
 then the calf should be assisted to milk. If the udder be very full and distend- 
 ed, a little milk may be carefully extracted by an experienced milker. If the 
 calf be feeble it may have a few spoonsful given by the spoon ; only, how- 
 ever, that it may more vigorously attack its mother. When the calf is sat- 
 isfied, the udder should be stripped clean. On the second day it should be 
 placed in a stall near the cow, to attract her attention, and be let out only 
 just before milking hours, which, in newly calved cows, should always re- 
 cur three times a-day at least. This should be practiced for a fortnight, as 
 all calves should have new milk for at least that period, and then the hand 
 milking may be altogether substituted. She has got a habit of docility from 
 instinct, and gives her milk with cheerfulness and pleasure ; but, if with a 
 sore udder, without her calf, and its mental influence as well as its physi- 
 cal, upon her, she is left to brood on her unsatisfied instincts, she gets peevish 
 and sulky. The period of milking, which ought to be one of relief, bejomes 
 one of pain and annoyance, and often cruelty ; she becomes a confirmed 
 vicious cow, and therefore a hard milker ! Young heifers should never be 
 tied at first. So long as>the calf suckles she will not require it, but when 
 tied by the feet she should also have a noose passed over her hams, to pre- 
 vent her kicking. Three persons should always be sent to milk a young 
 cow, one to her head, one to her hams, and one to milk. If she shows vice, 
 or wildness, or" icks at first, the noose over her hams will be a very eflicient 
 remedy. Milking should always be performed the very first thing in the 
 morning ; five in summer, and six in winter, are the latest periods it should 
 ever be performed. In the evening it may be done at five, and regularity 
 here has more to do with success than is generally imagined. The cows 
 
68 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 should not be driven home, but the milk should be carried from the field, if 
 distant ; for a great waste of milk will take place if they are driven about. 
 If under cover, it is by no means a bad plan to give them their feed at the 
 time they are milked. It adds to their quietness, and makes them part with 
 their milk more freely ; and as most milk cows, in winter and spring at 
 least, have mash, it is desirable to give them this during the milking the 
 first thing in the morning. 
 
 The most important part of the operation of milking is perhaps to millc 
 clean. — to take out the whole of the milk from the udder. Not only is the 
 last portion the richest in cream and in butter, but there is not a more cer- 
 tain way of drying a cow than allowing a part of her meal to remain in the 
 udder. It is a good, but too generally neglected plan, to wash the udder 
 with warm water before milking. Nor is it of less consequence to have a 
 good tempered and expert milker ; a savage ill-tempered milker will often 
 spoil a cow, and, if she once holds up her milk, it is a proof that the milker 
 is defective or disagreeable to the animal, either from her disposition and 
 temper, or in the manipulation of the udder. Pleasant milking is that 
 which sensibly relieves the cow's udder. A free, decided, but gentle grasp 
 of the teats, and a full and vigorous stream of milkj are the marks of a suc- 
 cessful milker. It is desirable to rub and stroke the udder when the stream 
 ceases, to encourage the delivery of the slightest remains ; nor is it a bad 
 plan for the milker, or in large dairies, for the foreman, or even master, to 
 take a small measure and follow the milker to '' strip " all the cows. There 
 are some masters who make a point of always attending to this at milking, 
 and they thus see the character and capabilities of the milker ; women are 
 by far the most capable of milking, their hands are more gentle emd deli- 
 cate, and the cows seem generally to prefer them. 
 
 There have been several attempts to ^complish the milking with other 
 than hand manipulation. Some syphons were invented, which were alleged 
 to have the peculiarity of clearing out the udder without the use of the hand. 
 But this has not been found so successful as to obtain any wide-spread use • 
 nor indeed to be much known, even amongst experienced agriculturists. It 
 is obvious that there are only two modes of overcoming the tension of the 
 udder, likely to effect the purpose. The one is compression, the other is 
 suction. The syphon went on the erroneous principle of distending the 
 mouth of the inner duct of the milk in the teats. This is a disagreeable pro- 
 cess, and would subject the cow to a flaccid state of teat, likely to induce her 
 to commit the fault of milking herself An American plaiLrecently men- 
 tioned in this country as practiced in the United States, is much more feasi- 
 ble. It proceeds on the two principles we have named, and consists of four 
 India rubber bags, which are drawn over the teals, and set so as to be air 
 tight. At the lower end of these, metallic tubes, with taps, are inserted : 
 when the adjustment is perfect the taps are turned, and the whole of the 
 
THE DAIRY HOUSE. 
 
 69 
 
 milk in the udder is said to be thoroughly exhausted, and in half the time 
 required for hand-milking. It is said that a man can milk ten cows tho- 
 roughly in fifteen minutes. It requires, perhaps, more experience than has 
 yet been obtained before it could be recommended, but the idea is novel and 
 not altogether void of feasibility. 
 
 THE DAIKY HOUSE 
 
 Is, perhaps, of all other appliances, the one on which success most 
 depends. It should be apart from all household operations, from open 
 grates, and from dung-heaps, and should have as much as possible the means 
 of an equable temperature. As, however, it is much easier to keep a cold 
 building warm, than to cool a hot one, it is desirable that it should be as 
 
 K 
 
 C 
 D 
 
 A Churning room. 
 
 B Cheese and scalding room. 
 
 C Milk room. 
 
 D Tatle. 
 
 E Verandah. 
 
 F Table for milk bowls. 
 G Curd pan. 
 H Tables round. 
 
 I Pump. 
 
 J Boilers for scalding. 
 
 much as possible shielded from the sun's rays. It should have its side to 
 the north, its end to the east, and should, if possible, be let into the earth a 
 few feet, but not so deep as to interfere with the drainage. If covered by a 
 large tree it would be all the better. Around it should be either a hollow 
 wall, or peat earth should be walled round its exterior ; or, as another alter- 
 native, and possibly the best but most expensive, it should be surrounded by 
 a verandah. It should also have a doubk roof, and abundant top and side 
 
^0 DAIRT HUSBANDRY. 
 
 ventilation, — either of which should admit of being dosed. It is necessary 
 to have in it a pump, the floor sloping, and on the highest part a perforated 
 pipe should be connected with the pump, to allow of the cleansing of the 
 floor with cold spring water when necessary. The bowls should either be 
 earthen ware or glass dishes, placed upon wooden tables — fir, maple, or syca- 
 more are the best, — or leaden bowls may be used, placed on frames, and 
 surrounding the dairy. Stones are the best for the floors, and a lining for 
 the walls of white pottery is not only elegant but useful ; a pipe connected 
 with the boiler attached to the kitchen fire is a great advantage, with a stop- 
 cock, so as to regulate the heat of the room in winter. The scalding 
 and churning rooms should be distinct from the milkhouse, and the latter 
 should be kept as free as possible from all kinds of foreij;u matter. An 
 outer verandah is useful for drying the dishes and pails, and therefore desir- 
 able, when the dairy is sufliciently extensive to render the expense of its 
 erection judicious. We give in the sketch on the preceding page the plan of 
 a dairy which combines the whole of these advantages. 
 
 THE AYRSHIRE DAIRY SYSTEM. 
 
 A district celebrated in Scotland, and in the north — and justly so, — ^for the 
 manufacture of Dunlop Cheese. These cheeses are from twenty-eight to 
 fifty-six pounds in weight, and hence, to make one large cheese at a meal 
 requires a dairy of at least fourteen cows. In this case a cheese is made 
 night and morning, but, if a smaller dairy is kept, the night's milk is reserved 
 till morning, the cream skimmed off, and both are warmed, so as to make 
 the whole mass 90'^ to 95". Following the course of the large dairies, how- 
 ever, — those where the cheese is made in the greatest perfection, namely, 
 from new milk as it comes from the cow, — a large cheese-tub is placed in 
 the dairy, and upon this is placed a framework of wood, denominated a lad- 
 der. Over the whole is placed a thin linen strainer, and the milk, if suffi- 
 ciently warm, viz., at least 85°, is strained through this cloth into the tub. 
 If, however, it should not be of that heat, it is placed in a deep tin or copper 
 vessel, and inserted in a furnace of hot water, until it attains the requisite 
 degree of heat, — for all the success of the cheese-making from the rich milk 
 of the Ayrshire cows depends upon this precaution. If the cheese is made 
 from milk of a less heat than this, the curd does not contract properly, and 
 some is wasted in the whey — nor is the cheese so compact ; whereas if it is 
 much hotter than 90", except in winter, when it cools down considerably in 
 the very operation of making, the cheese will ferment and the casein run 
 through its various stages of decay. 
 
 The next process is that of adding the rennet. This consists of the 
 stomach of calves, kept until at least one year old, when they are steeped in 
 salt and water, in the ratio of three to the gallon, and, in the best-managed 
 
THE ATBSHIBE DAIRY SYSTEM, 11 
 
 dairies at least, a lemon is added to take oiF the bad flavor. This stands for 
 some two months, before being used. A tablespoonful of this solution is 
 added to each hundred quarts of milk, and the whole is covered by a woolen 
 cloth to prevent the escape of the heat. 
 
 When the curd is sufficiently firm for breaking, usually about a quarter of 
 an hour after the rennet has been added, it is cut in all directions — a knife 
 with three blades being preferred, as expediting the process — so as to have 
 the curd in cubic pieces. It then begins to sink, and as much of the liquor 
 (whey) is taken out as can conveniently be removed in a wooden dish. The 
 cutting. of these cubical pieces again commences, slowly and cautiously at 
 first to break the curd as little as possible, but more rapidly afterwards, until 
 the whole of the pieces are thoroughly divided, and made quite fine. It is 
 then allowed to settle for some fifteen minutes, and the whey again taken 
 from it with the dish, and strained through a fine hair-sieve, to arrest any of 
 the small particles of curd which may be taken up with the whey. The 
 curd is then cut out, and laid in a heap in the tub, to allow the whey still to 
 drain away, but only by the pressure of its own weight ; and when all the 
 whey that will leave it has been so expressed, it is placed in the cheese- 
 vats, which were before covered with a cloth, remaining there for half an 
 hour, under a pressure of about fourteen pounds, to press out the remaining 
 whey, but leave the fatty or butyraceous particles in the curd. It is then 
 taken out and cut into slices, and again subjected to a greater pressure, and 
 either broken fine by the hand or torn in pieces by a curd-mill, until it be- 
 comes almost reduced to crumbs. It then undergoes the salting process, 
 which generally takes place at the rate of 7i ounces of salt to fourteen 
 pounds of cheese. A fine linen cheese-cloth is now washed in warm water, 
 wrung, and placed in the chessel, chessford, or vat, and half a hundred- 
 weight laid upon it for an hour; this is doubled for another hour, when the 
 cheese is taken out, placed in another cloth, and again put under an increased 
 weight for about three hours. This continues for about four days ; every 
 time changing the cloth, and generally turning the cheese upside down ; and 
 the weight is increased until the cheese arrives at a degree of consistency to 
 bear the pressure of a ton. 
 
 When taken out of the press, the cheeses are placed in a very dry and 
 somewhat warm atmosphere, often within the range of the influence of the 
 kitchen-fii-e, turned several times a-day, and rubbed with a dry cloth. This 
 continues for a week or ten days, when Ibey are removed to the cheese- 
 room, where they are exposed to a cool dry atmosphere ; a gradual mode of 
 ripening being, at this stage, necessary to their proper condition. The Dun- 
 lop cheese is seldom colored, though, some herein imitate the Gloucester and 
 Cheshire fashion. The peculiarity of management is that of making the 
 cheese from the milk from the cow before it cools. 
 
72 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 THE chesh;kt: dairy system. 
 
 The Cheshire cheese is as celebrated in England as the Dunlop is in Scot- 
 land, and it has long received the greatest attention from the Cheshire 
 dairymen. The evening's milk is set until the morning, when the cheese is 
 generally made, and the cream taken off. The skim-milk is scalded to 
 about 100°, and one half of it, mixed with the new milk from the cows of 
 the same morning, is strained through a fine hair or gauze sieve, while the 
 remaining half is mixed with the cream, which is also added, so that thv 
 whole mass is about 83" to 85" ; the annatto being added to the mixture in 
 the proportion necessary to give the color aimed at in that particular dairy. 
 Two pounds of annatto are generally considered adequate to color a ton of 
 cheese. The rennet is prepared exactly in the mode described in speaking 
 of the Dunlop cheese, and added in about the same proportion. The tub is 
 then covered with a wooden cover, and a cloth placed over it to keep in the 
 heat, and remains about an hour in this condition. The curd is then gently 
 but thoroughly cut with a cheese-knife until it is divided into small pieces, 
 and is again left covered for an hour to settle. The whey is then taken out 
 by a pan or dish ; the dish being pressed gently on the curd, to gather up 
 the whey. The curd is laid on a heap in the tub, and gently pressed. As 
 more and more of the whey separates, the curd may sustain the greater 
 amount of pressure without fear of forcing out the fatty matter. A perfor- 
 ated board is placed over the curd in the tub, and a weight, of from twenty 
 to twenty-five pounds, placed upon it, and again the whey is bailed out ; it 
 is then turned, and the same board, with a greater weight, placed upon it. 
 It is then cut into square pieces, and pressed once or twice, when it is fit for 
 the vat or chessford, which has in it a coarse cloth. Before being put in, the 
 curd is broken into smaller pieces and salted, then piled up in the chessford, 
 and covered with the cloth by having its edges turned over it ; and as soon 
 as the curd adheres, a cover is placed on the vat, and the whole is pressed 
 by a thirty pound weight. The curd is then punctured on all sides with 
 skewers to admit of the free escape of the whey. It is taken out, cut in 
 slices, and again subjected to more pressure, and more punctures by the 
 skewers. The pressure is again increased, and the cheese frequently turned 
 and the edges pared ; the parings being placed on the top of the cheese, and 
 pressed into the center. A pressure of sixteen hundred weight is now 
 given, the cloth changed, and the cheese turned several times in forty-eight 
 hours ; then taken out, and immersed in or covered with salt. It is some- 
 times salted by washing it with salt brine, and is, when taken out of the vat, 
 placed in a cylinder or hoop of proper dimensions, when it is washed in warm 
 water, dried with a cloth, and placed on a shelf to dry, where it is allowed 
 to remain a week. It is afterwards washed and dried again, and anointed 
 with fresh butter. It is placed in a somewhat warm situation, and rubbed 
 
THE LEICESTERSHIRE DAIRY SYSTEM. 73 
 
 every day, for one week more, with butter, which much improves its cha- 
 racter, and, above all, its appearance. 
 
 WHEY BUTTER 
 
 Is a product of new milk dairies, and in Cheshire is a branch of dairy 
 manufacture. It was stated, that though much of the fatty matter of the 
 milk remained in the curd, yet some necessarily escaped into the whey. It 
 is already developed, but in a state of feeble union with the whey, and re- 
 quires a churning process before it can be collected. One hundred gallons 
 of milk, made into cheese, will give ninety gallons of whey. This will 
 yield twelve gallons of fatty, creamy matter, which when churned, will 
 give some four pounds of butter. The mode of treating the whey is to heat 
 it to about 180° ; afterwards it must be well stirred to prevent it "setting 
 on." At this stage some sour butter-milk is added, and occasionally some 
 white whey, in the proportion of about 1 to 1.70 of the former, and one 
 tenth of the latter. This causes the butyraceous matter to rise to the sur- 
 face of the pan, when it is skimmed off and placed in an earthenware jar, to 
 take exactly the course of fresh cream — to form lactic acid, and separate 
 the casein from the mass. The remainder of the whey is then allowed to 
 run off from the oily matter, which swims on the surface, and this is churned 
 the same way as the ordinary cream. The whey butter is an inferior kind, 
 worth about 20 per cent, less than milk butter, and is mainly used for pastry 
 purposes. 
 
 THE LEICESTEESHIBE BAIKY SYSTEM. 
 
 This fertile county, partly grazing, and partly dairy, is a mixture of arable 
 and grass land, and the pastures being, on the whole, rich, and the land pro- 
 ductive, a large portion is grazed by cattle. On some farms, however, the 
 dairy is the principal object, and the land enables them to produce a cheese 
 perhaps unequalled in richness. We have hitherto only had our attention 
 directed to new, or whole-milk cheese ; but a step beyond this may be 
 gained. If some of the skim-milk be rejected, and the cream added to the 
 new milk, we have a still richer cheese — ^the product for which the north- 
 eastern parts of Leicestershire are famous ; we mean the far-famed Stilton 
 Cheese. This cheese differs from the Dunlop as regards shape, and the 
 Cheshire both as to shape and bulk. The latter may be from half a hun- 
 dred-weight to two hundred-weight, though perhaps the former is nearer 
 the mark ; but the Stilton seldom weighs more than from twelve to foui- 
 teen pounds, and is the shape of a round hat without the brim, or about 
 eight inches in diameter and nine or ten high. They are generally made 
 by adding to the new milk of the morning the cream of the milk given on 
 4 
 
74 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 the previous evening. If a richer cheese is required, more cream is added, 
 and even butter is sometimes said to he added to enhance the peculiar rich- 
 ness of the Stilton cheese. The temperature should be about the same as 
 for the~ Cheshire, 85", and this is attained, when necessary, by inserting jugs 
 of hot water in the mixture. The rennet is added without any coloring 
 matter, and in an hour the curd is fully formed. Great care is necessary in 
 removing the curd. If handled roughly, or squeezed at all, the cheese is 
 seriously injured. It is usually gathered carefully off the whey by a wood- 
 en dish, and placed upon a linen strainer, which is tied together at the cor- 
 ners, after the manner of making cheese-cake curd ; and the whey gently 
 strains off by the pressure of its own weight alone, into a vessel beneath, 
 which receives it. A little squeezing with the hand, or with laths, is then 
 given, and the whole is allowed to drain six or eight hours in moderately 
 warm weather. It is then placed in a cylinder of copper, zinc, or tin, which 
 has numerous perforations at the sides, being first secured in an open or 
 coarse strainer ; gently cut in slices from the first strainer with a sharp 
 knife. In this hoop it remains for four or five days, being turned every day 
 once or twice, and punctured with skewers through the holes of the cylin- 
 der after the manner of the Cheshire. Warmth is requisite to the ripening 
 of this description of cheese. 
 
 When the curd has become solid, the cheese is removed from the cylinder, 
 and bound up in canvas bandages, or rollers, which encircle it several times. 
 These are clean and dry, all cracks are gradually filled up, and fresh binders 
 supplied every morning for a week or two, until the much prized skin is 
 formed ; after which they are removed to the drying place or chamber. It 
 is two years, however, before a Stilton cheese is at full maturity, except when 
 its ripening is hastened by the method of inoculation, described at the com- 
 mencement of this chapter. 
 
 THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE DAIRY SYSTEM. 
 
 In this district, celebrated for its double Gloucester cheese, the practice is 
 not so entirely dissimilar to the Dunlop and Cheshire modes, as to require a 
 very minute detail. They weigh usually about twenty-two pounds each, 
 and are a rich and useful cheese. The single Gloucester, or one-half new 
 milk, and one-half blue, or skimmed, are disappearing from public approba- 
 tion. The milk fresh from the cows is taken and mixed at once with the 
 rennet and annatto, and left for an hour covered up to prevent the escape of 
 the heat, which is maintained, so far as it can be, at the same degree as in 
 Cheshire, and the curd is broken by a knife with three blades, or a sieve 
 made of wire. The whey is taken out with a wooden dish, and is placed in 
 the vat, over which a linen cloth is spread. Into this cloth the curd is put, 
 and pressed with the hands until jt will bear the cover of the vat, which is 
 
THE DEVONSHIRE DAIRV SYSTEM. 75 
 
 then placed upon it, and loaded with a weight, or it is placed in the cheese 
 press. The curd is then torn in pieces by a curd mill, and again placed with 
 a clean cloth in the vat, and pressed. In four or five days the curd is 
 thoroughly deprived of the whey, and is taken out to undergo the process 
 of drying. No salt is mixed with the curd, but it is rubbed upon the exterior 
 of the cheese, some twelve to twenty hours after it has been put in the press. 
 It is rubbed in with the hand, so long as the curd appears to absorb it ; and 
 the cheese is again transferred to the press. This takes place three times 
 each day, and the quantity of salt, allowing for waste, which a cheese of 
 twenty-two pounds will absorb, will be about ten ounces. When taken 
 from the cloth, ,they are wiped and laid to dry, in the ordinary manner, being 
 frequently turned. When intended for sale in London, they are scraped and 
 painted. A coat of red coloring matter, dissolved in ale, is used, which 
 is rubbed on the cheese with flannel. Of course this has no beneficial ten- 
 dency. 
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE DAIRY SYSTEM. 
 
 This is peculiar, especially as regards the manufacture of butter. It is said 
 that the process adopted there, is one productive of more butter, and that of 
 a better quality, and more agreeable flavor, than any other. The cream, be- 
 fore churning, undergoes the process of clotting, or clouting, and the clouted 
 cream is thus procured. As soon as the milking and skimming processes are 
 over, the warm new milk is placed in a brass pan, sufBciently capacious to 
 hold the m'^al. A small quantity of cold water is placed in the pan, and here 
 it stands in the day time for six hours, or at night till the following morning. 
 It is then carefully placed near a slow charcoal or coke fire, so as to be heat- 
 ed to a certain point, but not permitted to boil. It is a delicate matter to 
 have a fire just brisk enough to prevent the milk from curdling in summer, 
 and still not so hot as to cause it to heave or boil. A firm consistency on the 
 surface, and a tough consolidated appearance are the criterions usually de- 
 pended upon for the proper amount of heat. 
 
 When sufficiently scalded, the pan and its contents are removed to a cool 
 place in summer, and covered over, until cool, with a woollen cloth in win- 
 ter, when the cream is taken off. The churning may then either be per- 
 formed at once, or delayed a day or two ; but no souring is necessary in this 
 clouted cream — a reason why the butter may be considered more palatable 
 to some tastes. The process of churning is very simple : the cream is placed 
 in wooden bowls, which are alternately scalded with hot, and washed with 
 cold water — a process which by evaporation js said to cool them beyond 
 anything else in which the cream can be placed — it is then briskly stirred by 
 the hand, or by a " whisk" of peeled willows, until the buttermilk separates 
 from the butter, which is usually effected in some ten minutes. The butler- 
 
TS DAIRT HUSBANDEY. 
 
 milk being poured off, the butter is washed with fresh water, a little salt 
 added, and the butter repeatedly beaten either by the hand, or with a 
 wooden trencher or spatula. It is then formed into small cakes, and impress- 
 ed with either the peculiar device of the dairy, or some lanciful emblem, and 
 is ready for the market. 
 
 THE TORKSHIKE DAIKY SYSTEM. 
 
 The dairy husbandry of Yorkshire is a combination of the ordinary 
 operations of some four distinct classes of dairy-farming. , The one is the 
 making of butter in rolls, stones, or firkins, for the manufacturing districts of 
 the West of England, and is often combined with the making of sMm milk 
 cheese, as it is provincially called. The other is the making of new milk 
 cheese, practised in Wensleydale, and to a small extent in Cleveland; these 
 two latter modes we shall not describe, as they are not materially different 
 from that of other districts ; and lastly the making of cream cheese,, mainly 
 confined to the valleys of the west, and known as York cream cheese. 
 
 The Yorkshire Butter is usually made from dairies of from six to fifteen 
 cows. In summer the milk, after straining, is placed in a large brass 
 " kettle," or cooler, and often stirred, to dissipate the foam, and prevent the 
 setting of the cream. In winter this process is unnecessary, and it is at 
 once strained into leaden bowls, in which it is usually kept, a little hot water 
 being added to the milk in winter, to evaporate the aroma of any roots the 
 animals may have eaten, and in summer a little cold water is added, which 
 is said to facilitate the separation of the cream. In winter it remains twen- 
 ty-four hours in the bowls ; in summer twelve, and even less, for the dairy- 
 woman watches the milk with the assiduity of a hay-maker in a showery 
 hay-time, and on the least advance of heat, or tendency to thunder, she sepa- 
 rates the milk from the cream. The bowl contains a plug in the bottom. 
 This is taken out, and the milk runs off, and is taken away; the plug being 
 returned to arrest the flow of the cream. The cream is then also let off into 
 an earthen vessel, or pancheon, and the leaden bowl being nicely scraped 
 with a thin piece of horn, is carefully washed and scalded, and is ready, when 
 cool, for the next meal of milk. The cream is kept in these earthen jars 
 or vessels, and stirred frequently ; and in winter placed before the fire all 
 night, to acquire the fermentation necessary to an easy and rapid churning. 
 If the cattle have had turnips, a little saltpetre is added to the cream ; and if 
 there is no recently calved cow amongst the dairy herd, a little rolled annatto, 
 or, what is better, an infusion of grated carrots is added, to give the butter the 
 color requisite for the taste of the markets. The cream is then strained 
 again into a clean, and well-scalded churn, which is turned gently at first, 
 and frequently vented, to allow the escape of the air accumulated by the 
 churning. When this escape ceases, it is turned briskly round, and if all is 
 
BLUB MILK CHEESE. 
 
 "Jl 
 
 right will be churned in twenty minutes. If the process is slow in winter, 
 a little hot water is added, the sign of the formation of butter being the wa- 
 tery sound in the churn, and a semi-curdled appearance on the vent cork. 
 As soon as the butter is forming, the churn is turned much more carefully 
 round, and the butter begins to collect. As this goes on, a little of the but- 
 termilk is let off, and the butter, when finally collected and freed from all the 
 remaining buttermilk, is placed with cold water into the butter trough, 
 washed and kneaded several times in fresh supplies of cold spring water. It 
 is then salted, and either worked into rolls, which usually consist of some 
 twenty-four ounces, or rolled up into lumps of fourteen pounds, called " store 
 butter." In other cases it is put away in wooden casks, called firkins, 
 usually a mode in which it is preserved till the winter, and made up into 
 pounds then J)y being washed in milk and resalted ; in this state it is sold to 
 their customers by the huxters, who think a little rancidity is not too great 
 a penalty to pay for escaping the taste of turnips, so common in wmter-made 
 butter. 
 
 BLUE MILK CHEESE. 
 
 This cheese is made in the great butter dairies, and is a sort of accom- 
 paniment to the combined dairy system of Yorkshire. The milk, while 
 sweet — one reason why the dairywoman must be stirring in summer by 
 three or four o'clock in the morning, or even earlier — is placed in a kettle, 
 the rennet is added, with the coloring, which consists of annatto, and the 
 whole mass heated to something like blood-heat ; the hand being the gene- 
 ral test of its extent, and perhaps 90° being the nearest approximation to it 
 that we can arrive at. When the curd is formed, it is laved out with a dish 
 into the butter-trough, and the whey allowed to drip from it through a hole 
 in the bottom. When all the whey has escaped, it is either broken very 
 small by the hand, or placed jn a curd-mill ; for, having little of the butyr- 
 aceous matter present in whole or new milk cheeses, there is less fear of ma- 
 nipulating the skim-milk curd than there is in the cases of Dunlop and Stil- 
 ton. A cloth is then spread over a vat, and it is put in a press, turned every 
 night and morning till the whole of the whey is expressed ; the cloth being 
 changed every turning. It is then put away to dry and ripen, and was once 
 a favorite substance for a morning or evening meal, for the farm-servants, 
 with bread and milk. They now, however, dislike and despise it, and have 
 oftener animal food three times per day than anything else. It is used with 
 bread and ale, for their " drinkings" in harvest. 
 
 THE YORK CREAM CHEESES 
 
 Are not, as the name would purport them to be, made at York ; but are 
 mainly made in the poorer valleys at the western extremity of the county. 
 The village of Gruelthorpe has the envied notoriety of making the best 
 
'78 DAIKY HUSBANDRT. 
 
 cream cheese, — a great trade with London, and all parts of the kingdom, 
 being carried on by the inhabitants of this locality. The process is simple, 
 and depends, like almost all other dairy practices, on the most scrupulous 
 regard to cleanliness, and freedom from the taint of all kinds of putrefaction. 
 There are two kinds of creand cheeses — one which is made by simply plac- 
 ing the cream in an oblong tin case, perforated with holes, from which the 
 milk and watery portions of the cream leave the thick cream, and to which 
 a little hand-pressure is applied. But the genuine cream cheese is made of 
 the cream coagulated by the steep of the rennet in the following manner ; — 
 Five quarts of the strippings (the last milk given by the cow) are put in a 
 pan, with two spoonsful of rennet. The curd, when formed by gentle heat, 
 is broken down two or three times with a dish. It is then allowed to stand 
 on a sieve, covered with a clean napkin, for ?ome two hours, when a little 
 pressure is applied by the hand, or by a fluted piece of wood, — and it is ready 
 for use in three weeks. 
 
 THE WILTSHIRE DAIRY SYSTEM. 
 
 This will close our description of the English modes of dairy manage- 
 ment ; and would not have been introduced, for even this cursory notice, had 
 it not been the district which supplies the celebrated Cheddar cheese; for, 
 although the Cheddar valley is really in an adjoining county, yet the greatest 
 part of the cheese known by that name, sold in London, is made in Wilt- 
 shire. These conical-shaped cheeses very slightly differ from the Dunlop 
 in their actual make. The smallness of their size enables the dairyman to 
 make a cheese for every meal ; and also prevents the necessity for so much 
 pressure as is used in some other kinds, by which a great quantity of the but- 
 ter is crushed out. The only severe manipulation is the breaking of the curd, 
 which is performed in a very minute degree ; this enables the dairyman to 
 allow a great portion of the whey to drain off, with no other compression 
 than is given by its own weight, the curd being disposed in a conical form, 
 in which position it remains some twenty-four, hours. It is then suspended 
 in an open coarse cloth, or even net, to admit air freely, and is so small in 
 dimensions, and especially in diameter, that the whey is dried up by eva- 
 poration, before it becomes rancid or spoils the cheese. The freshness of the 
 milk has also a favorable tendency in this particular. The salt is added to 
 the curd. 
 
 FOREIGN DAIRY MANAGEMENT. 
 
 Climate, as well as breeds of cattle and kinds of pasturage, have influence 
 on the production of cheese, as well as butter ; and though few countries 
 can vie with our own in the excellency of its general dairy productions, still, 
 in some particulars, foreigners are our superiors. Take, as an instance 
 
SYSTEMS OF ITALY AND SWITZKREAND. "79 
 
 THE DAIEY SYSTEM OF ITALY, 
 
 Especially in the manufacture of Parmesan cheese; — which, though partly 
 skim-milk cheese, is almost equal to some of our very best home produc- 
 tibns from milk ; it is also in great demand by the epicures of our large cities. 
 From the great size of the cheese, containing sometimes as much as two 
 hundred weight, they often require eighty or ninety cows in a dairy to make 
 them to perfection. One-half of the milk is kept twelve hours, and then 
 skimmed ; the other half, six hours, and also skimmed ; they are then put 
 together in a pan, and heated to a greater heat than English skim-milk 
 cheese, sometimes as high as 120" Fahrenheit. After it has a little cooled, 
 the rennet is added, and the curd being formed, the mass is again heated to a 
 still greater heat (140°) , taking care to stir the mass rapidly during the heat- 
 ing. This breaks the curd into small pieces, and saves the curd-mill, 
 to which it is said so much of the toughness of the English skim-milk cheese 
 is due. The whey is run off, and the curd colored slightly with saiFion. 
 The mass has then cold water added to cause it to coagulate and set, it is 
 then collected from the whey with a cloth, and placed in a fixed press. The 
 next day the cheese, for so it must now be called, is taken out and rubbed on 
 one side with salt, and again subjected to pressure . This rubbing with salt 
 is repeated on the other side, when it is again turned, continuing the process 
 of turning and salting, with the pressure, for forty days. For preservation, 
 the surface of the cheese is rubbed with linseed oil, and a red ochery coat is 
 given to one side ; when the cheese is fit for sale, this favorite production 
 fetches a large price. 
 
 Mascarponi cheese is also an Italian production, and somewhat resembles 
 our cream cheeses, but made rather after the Devonshire mode than the 
 Yorkshire. The cream is heated nearly up to the boiling point ; and, when 
 the butyraceous matter begins to separate, a little sour whey is added to the 
 mass, which forms a sort of curd ; this is taken out and placed in moulds, — 
 having perforated bottoms, through which the whey escapes, — to take such 
 shapes as fancy or custom may dictate ; and when come to a proper con- 
 sistence, they are deposited in napkins, covered with straw or leaves, and 
 pressed gently with the hand. Sometimes tartaric acid is used instead of 
 the fermented whey, as the latter, occasionally containing particles of putrid 
 casein, is apt to give a rancid taste to the cheese, and diminish its keeping 
 -qualities. The kind of acid is not material. 
 
 THE DAIRY SYSTEM OF SWITZERLAND. 
 
 The Swiss butter has the remarkable peculiarity of keeping for ten or 
 eleven months perfectly sweet, without 'any admixture of salt. Some attri- 
 bute this to extra diligence and care on the part of the dairy people, in ex- 
 pressing the buttermilk, and to the peculiar mode of preservation adopted ; 
 
8Q DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 but in all probability it is due to the cool and highly rarified air of the moun- 
 tain districts, which are the most favorable for its preservation. The but- 
 ter is made every day, so that no decomposing putrescence takes place in 
 the cream ; when made, it is washed with the greatest care, and a great 
 deal of kneading and compression in the pure spring water of the district 
 takes place. It is then deposited in the following extraordinary manner. 
 A narrow board is fixed across the dairy, like a kind of shelf, but in the part 
 where it is most exposed to a free current of air ; to the surface of this are 
 attached a row of wooden spikes, some two or three feet long. As the but- 
 ter is made, it is plastered to the top of one of these spikes ; and so the de- 
 posit of butter continues to accumulate every day till the whole is covered, 
 and each deposite of butter is dried and preserved as it is placed on the pin, 
 but more upwards than downwards, until it forms a sort of inverted cone ; 
 the top overhanging the base to permit the more facile dripping of the moist- 
 ure. In a short time a hard air-tight covering envelops the mass, and ren- 
 ders it so impervious to air that it will be found perfectly fresh for several 
 months. 
 
 The boiled butter is another mode of preserving the produce of the Swiss 
 mountain sides, and is thus manufactured : — A quantity of thirty or forty 
 pounds of butter is placed in a large copper, over a very slow fire, until the 
 whole is gently melted. This slow fire is continued until the whole comes 
 to a boiling point, generally in about two hours, careful stirring at intervals 
 taking place during the whole period. The boiling must be gradually and 
 gently kept up for the same period as it took to arrive at the boiling point, 
 and still continuing the stirring. After this it is allowed to cool slowly 
 down, which may occupy about two hours more. The deposited mass of 
 caseous matter, coagulated by the heat, then takes place ; and the butter, 
 while just so warm as to pour, is carefully taken off the cheesy mass, and 
 corked up in air-tight jars, when it may be kept sweet, though of course 
 without the flavor of fresh butter, for any number of years. 
 
 THE HOLSTKIN DAIRY SYSTEM, 
 
 Is one which turns out very celebrated butter, and this is only due to the 
 simple fact that, being itself so important a production as to be worthy of 
 attention as a manufacture, all its details are managed with attention and 
 skill, and consequently well done ; this can never be the case when it is com- 
 bined with the perplexities of arable farming. The dairies in Holstein vary 
 from 100 to 1000 cows, and the establishment consists of a distinct suite of 
 dairy apartments. In some of the best dairies the milk-dishes are placed in 
 a raised brick ledge, forming a sort of open drain, and in hot weather cold 
 spring water is pumped into them, so as to give artificial coolness to the 
 milk in the pans. Sometimes even a large piece of ice is introduced into the 
 dairy, and even into the churn, to lower the temperature when the heat is 
 
COTTAGE AND SUBURBAN DAIRIES. 81 
 
 excessive. Milking is performed earlier in the morning than common. 
 Three o'clock, and even two, are hours at which they are occasionally stir- 
 ring ; and the milking takes place at four, and in general five in the afternoon. 
 The milk is placed in vessels of wood, zinc, lead, glass, and sometimes of 
 various materials lined with china or delf. Of course, when the ledges we 
 before spoke of are in use, the glass or zinc vessels are used, as wood is too 
 slow a conductor of heat to admit of the carrying out of the water-cooling pro- 
 cess. The churning and attendance are the same as in every well-managed 
 dairy ; but the making of the butter is peculiar. It is never washed at all, 
 which is said in Hplstein to injure the butter. It is salted with some one 
 and one-eighth pound of salt to fourteen pounds of butter, and subjected to a 
 good deal of pressure, kneading, and beating, by being lifted up and thrown 
 down agaih into the trough : it is then allowed to soak or drip for several 
 hours, when it is again subjected to the same treatment. When a sufficient 
 quantity of butter is made to fill one of the casks or firkins, — of which there 
 are three sizes made, one containing about a hundredweight, another some 
 one hundred and forty pounds, and the third two hundredweight, — it is re- 
 kneaded and packed in a salt-seasoned cask ; care being taken to make the 
 cask perfectly air-tight. Skim-milk cheese is also made exactly in the 
 mode in which it is made in England, only on a scale considerably greater. 
 
 This brief sketch comprises all that we need say on the leading dairy sys- 
 tems, and in the course of it the peculiar principles which ought to guide the 
 dairyman in improving his system, have been pretty clearly developed. 
 The large establishment of the dairy husbandman and the small product of 
 the cottier require to be directed by the same great essential principles of 
 dairy management; watchful attention to the health and comfort of the ani- 
 mals, and careful milking, perfect cleanliness in the dairy itself, and careful 
 watching of the proper time and weather for the various operations. 
 
 COTTAGE AND SUBURBAN DAIRIES. 
 
 Although an attempt has been made in the progress of this treatise, to 
 describe, step by step, the details of dairy management and cattle keeping, 
 and to elucidate the best principles of management, yet it mav be considered 
 desirable to aiford to the cottager and the amateur, who may have a limited 
 area of land, the means of making the most of their resources. The latter 
 has usually two or three acres of grass, the former somewhat less of arable 
 land, and there are modes of management which will enable them both, with 
 proper care and labor spent upon it, to produce double the quantity as com- 
 pared to ordinarily farmed land. 
 
 The capabilities of arable land for growing green crops are almost unlimit- 
 ed ; and it is scarcely possible to over- rate the productiveness of a small area 
 of land, when carefully and liberally farmed. 
 
 The quantity of arable land necessary to the keep of a cow all the year 
 4* 
 
82 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 round, will necessarily depend upon its quality; but if useful land, and once 
 in heart, it may be taken at one and a half acres. If not in condition, it will 
 require deep trenching ; if light land, claying and well manuring ; but once 
 in good fertile condition it may be readily kept so, only requiring a very 
 small amount of extraneous food to be given to the cattle. The cropping 
 that should be adopted to attain the largest amount of food is, first to sow 
 the land with rye, clover, winter tares, and Italian ryegrass. In favorable 
 localities the rye will be fit to cut in February. It is supposed that all the 
 crops are to be soiled, that is, consumed in the stall ; as soon as the rye is off, 
 the land must be digged and planted with potatoes, cabbages being inserted 
 between the rows, and beans planted between the potatoes. The Italian rye- 
 grass is next soiled, and after each cutting the land must be well saturated 
 with liquid manure brought from the cow-house. When this is once cut 
 down the winter tares may be eaten off, and the land dug for turnips, Swedes 
 for the spring, and white Norfolk for the winter, or if near the sea, mangel 
 wurzel will be the most advisable crop. The clover and Italian ryegrass will 
 then alternate with each other, taking care that the latter is always dressed 
 with liquid manure, for it has not the same effect on the clover. The bean 
 straw may be chopped and the beans crushed, and thus a great amount of 
 green food, both large in quantity and valuable in quality, will be afforded 
 all the year round.* 
 
 Where the amateur has grass land only, it will be necessary to set apart a 
 portion for meadow, and the rest for soiling. The latter should have a dress- 
 ing prepared of wood scrapings, clay, and decayed vegetable matter, applied 
 in February, with a pretty liberal hand, the whole of this compost being well 
 saturated, under cover, with liquid manure. In addition, there should be ap- 
 plied two hundred-weight of guano per acre, and either along with it, or soon 
 after, there should be brushed in, half a peck per acre of Italian ryegrass 
 seed. When ready for cutting, this should be mixed with hay, a mixture of 
 boiled ground linseed, and bean or barley meal poured upon it, in the propor- 
 tion of one pound of the former and two pounds of the latter to the gallon ; the 
 grass, after every cutting to be dressed with the liquid manure. Three, and 
 in favorable years four, cuttings may be 'easily made. When the hay has 
 been mown and made in the lap-cock fashion, the' land should have a dressing 
 of liquid manure, and the fog soiled the same as the grass. When the sea- 
 son is unfavorable or the grass deficient, the linseed compound may be resort- 
 ed to. In winter, cut hay, given with linseed compound, varied by occasional 
 meals of brewers' grains, will be found invaluable substitutes. Green food 
 may then be given from March till November, and hay for the rest of the 
 period mixed with linseed compound, in which case roots so diflicult to ob- 
 tain by the suburban amateur may be dispensed with altogether. 
 
 * Of course in America a different system must be pursued. Tlie green crop should 
 bo Indian corn. Clover for summer and roots witli liay for winter. — Am. Ed. 
 
COTTAGE AND SUBURBAN DAIRIES. 83 
 
 The cow-Iumse should be as airy as possible, and if with weather boarding 
 facing the south and West, so much the better. The floor may be boarded 
 or flagged, with a slope from the head of the animal to the tail, a channel 
 behind, and a drain into a tank, of the capacity of one hundred gallons per 
 cow, well coated inside with Roman cement. The whole should be kept 
 white-washed and perfectly clean, and free from all disagreeable smells. 
 Where the floor is boarded, the litter, so often difficult to obtain, may be dis- 
 pensed with ; but if the floor is flagged with stone, or indeed, in any case, it is 
 desirable to litter her with an ample supply of saw-dust. The fragrant 
 freshness of the wood, the soft bed it makes, the absorbant character of the 
 material, and above all, the facility it affords as a vehicle for conveying away 
 the solid manure, render it exceedingly valuable as a litter for cows. More- 
 over, it is as easily obtained as it is almost invariably overlooked. The 
 cows should be regularly fed and well curried, and, if possible, turned out 
 daily in fine weather, for two hours per day, for open-air exercise. The cot- 
 tager, at the expense of very little labor and ingenuity, may construct for 
 himself a very excellent cow house at little cost. 
 
 The dairy should be quite apart from the house, and, how small soever its 
 dimensions, should be strictly kept for dairy purposes. No cooking, nor de- 
 cayed meat, nor any offensive processes should be allowed within its pre- 
 cincts, but only such as are connected with the management of the milk. It 
 should face the north, and admit of free ventilation. It ought to be a little 
 sunk in the ground, with a sloping floor, and have a pipe carried into it in 
 conriection with the pump, and also a drain running out. In hot weather the 
 water from the pump should be allowed to trickle on the floor ; at any rate 
 daily washing should be scrupulously attended to. Glass milk-pnns are neat 
 arid elegant vehicles for holding the milk, are easily removed, and any want 
 of cleanliness in them is readily detected. The amateur should also have a 
 pipe from the boiler of the kitchen fire, into which, at pleasure, he can allow 
 the hot water to flow. This pipe should be carried under the table on which 
 the milk-pans are placed, and in very severe frosts of winter it will be use- 
 ful in keeping up the requisite temperature. 
 
 The dairy operations of the small cow-keeper, whether for livelihood or 
 pleasure, are necessarily on a small scale, and do not admit of many appli- 
 ances. Attention to cleanliness is, above all things, requisite. The main 
 points are the thorough scalding of the milk-pans, the pails, and the whole 
 of the dairy utensils. The proper cooling and stirring of the milk in sum- 
 mer, when first brought into the dairy, until the whole of the foam generattu 
 in milking is subsided ; the careful straining of the milk through a gauze or 
 wire seive, and the creaming of the milk before it is allowed to turn sour in 
 the slightest degree. The cream, when collected, must be frequently stirred 
 especially in summer, and in winter, warmed before the fire all night pre- 
 vious lo the operation of churning. This, for small cow-keepers, may be 
 
84 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 performed either with the ordinary stand-chum, or with the American chnm, 
 now common in most parts of the country, and which is very suitable fdi 
 churning small quantities of butter. 
 
 It is needless to recapitulate the directions as to the management of cream 
 and butter, because there is no difference between the mode of regulation re- 
 quired for a dairy with one cow or with twenty. Care, attention, early 
 rising, good ventilation, and cleanliness, even to fastidiousness, are the cardinal 
 virtues of dairy management. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FEEDING OF DAIRY COWS AND HEARING OF CALVES. 
 
 The main points in the controversy as to whether dairy cows should be 
 house-fed on cut grass in summer, or pasture-fed, has been partly anticipated 
 by the previous remarks. It is an unsettled point, because the advocates of 
 each system are unwilling to give in to the other, and the truth is that each 
 system has its peculiar advantages in peculiar situations. The element of 
 cost of land and labor, of nearness to and distance from a large town, of the 
 nature of the grass or herbage, of the conveniences of the occupier, and fifty 
 other considerations, will make the scale of profit preponderate one way or 
 the other. In large towns, for instance, where land is dear and at a distance 
 from the dairy, it is found to be more economical to cart the materials of 
 food to the cattle. For small cottiers also, for instance, when they have but 
 a small quantity of land, and this perhaps dear, and their labor of little value, 
 soiling or summer feeding in the house will be abundantly preferable. But 
 in the majority of strictly dairy farms, where there is a large range of poor 
 pasture, the grass of which would hardly repay the cost of cutting and cart- 
 ing, there can be no question whatever that there must be a complete revo- 
 lution in the nature of the occupation, and of the character of the soil itself, 
 before any change can ever be expected to take place. 
 
 It is a very important question, however, whether the two systems may not 
 be combined with profit. We mean, that, instead of alloting an acre or an 
 acre and a half of land to a milking cow, that two-thirds of that quantity 
 should be provided, and here she should roam at liberty, with plenty of run- 
 ning water if possible, and either large shady trees or an ample shed for shel- 
 ter, while, at each milking time, she.is to be supplied with a bundle of tares 
 or clover, of saintfoin or lucerne ; under this treatment she will be found am- 
 ply to repay the trouble. The principal danger of house-feeding solely 
 would be obviated. This danger is that either too much food is given to the 
 cow, and so nausea and waste are occasioned, or the cow does not get it in 
 
TEEDINa OP DAIRY COWS. 85 
 
 that clean sweet condition which might he wished, while she is also de- 
 ficient in air and exercise ; but, with the treatment we have recommended — 
 with a foddering of green food, fresh mown, with her roam in the pasture, 
 she has all the advantages of hand-feeding without any of its objections. 
 She can eke out her meal in her pasture ; she has it clean, and has also plenty 
 of air and exercise ; while she can consult her own will as to the amount of 
 rest or shelter she takes, in hot or rainy weather. 
 
 So much for summer management ; in winter it is quite another matter. 
 Some are pinched and starved, have the cold straw-fold in winter, and are 
 exposed to every blast of heaven ; some have more or less hay or turnips, 
 while others are watched and tended with the most assiduous care. The 
 first is the most costly system. It is the dearest way of all to starve the 
 cows, and a moderate degree of attention and care is necessary to the most 
 economical produce of the milk cow, whether it be in milk or butter. 
 When the pastures begin to fail, it is usual to turn the cow upon the fog or 
 aftermath, say in the month of October, — for nearly all cowkeepers have of 
 necessity a quantity of grass-land producing hay, and the after eatage of 
 this land affords the best possible food for the milk cow, whether butter or 
 cheese be the object sought by the dairyman. When tliis somewhat fails, 
 a little hand-feeding — a few turnip tops, or rape, or even a little bran mash, 
 will be well bestowed; for if the milk goes down at this period it is 
 never regained in winter by any care which can be exercised. If town 
 milk is the object, a few brewers' grains would be the most valuable addi- 
 tion to the eatage which could be made. If the weather should still be 
 open and favorable, the pasture, freed in October, will have grown up a 
 little, and will afford a very useful turn out for the cow, for she must usually 
 be housed at night, when the fog is finished. In the house she should either 
 have hay and mangel wurzel or turnips ; or if she has straw, should have 
 cooked linseed, or oat, or bean meal mash. The mode of cooking linseed 
 we shall refer to amply in the chapter on cattle feeding, but for small farm- 
 ers without apparatus, a very cheap and extempore mode may be pursued 
 without difficulty. The chaff of the barn, after winnowing, may be collect- 
 ed, as free from dust as possible, or, if mixed with it, may be sifted and laid 
 by. A bushel of linseed may be added to two bushels of barley or oats, or 
 even wheat, or any other grain, grown in the ordinary way. This may be 
 boiled in an ordinary boiler, taking care to keep it. well stirred to prevent 
 its " setting on " at the bottom of the boiler. After boiling a quarter of an 
 hour, if this be poured upon the chaff in the proportion of one and a-half to 
 two pounds of the meal, and one galloh of water to one bushel of chaff, one 
 of the most useful, and certainly the cheapest adjunct to milk cow and store 
 stock feeding, will be adopted which can be conceived. A great objection 
 to turnips, in large quantities at least, is the flavor they give to the milk and 
 the butter ; and this is a difficulty which only can be partially got over. It 
 
86 DAIRY HUSBANDET. 
 
 is surprising, however, how few turnips or roots will he required if the 
 compound system be adopted, and this quantity heing so small, it is easy to 
 vary them, giving potatoes, carrots, mangel wurzel, he., in an ever changing 
 round. 
 
 It is a question whether hay need ever he given, if the compound system 
 he adopted. If it he not, the cows must have a liheral allowance of hay. 
 In Norfolk, oats, barley, or bean-meal, is mixed with chopped hay. It is 
 questionable, however, whether the cow has not more gratification, and 
 hence more advantage, from selecting and masticating the hay alone, than 
 can he derived from the cutting and mixture which, at least, is a costly and 
 laborious process. A small quantity and a great variety of food, will, on 
 the whole, produce the most favorable effect on milk cows. 
 
 Cleanliness is one of the greatest of all the requisites in a successful dairy 
 cow-house. They must be kept free from smells of all kinds, and if they 
 are not turned out, the house should he frequently washed, whitewashed, 
 and the animals diligently rubbed, and even curried. A thriving cow out 
 of doors is known by her having the marks of her tongue upon her skin. If 
 she is not at liberty to lick her own skin she should at least have it done for 
 her. Her litter should be taken away the first thing in the morning, and 
 fresh clean straw given in its place. But, above all, she canntot have too 
 much air, if the cold blast be just shielded off Bad as exposure is, the 
 crowding of cows in close places is ten times worse. There should be free 
 currents of air. Ventilators at the top of the cow-house in the louvre style, 
 open fronts to the south, capable of shutting up in case of snow or southern 
 rain, and capacious ventilators at the bottom by grates or ventilating bricks, 
 are indispensable to the health of the cows. If these he neglected there can 
 he no hope of health in the cows or success in the dairy. 
 
 The influence of food on the quantity and character of the milk, is a ques- 
 tion on which there has been a great deal of speculation. A very scientific 
 agriculturist, Mr. H. Briggs of Overton, furnished the writer with an experi- 
 ment showing that the increase of milk, within certain limits, was almost 
 in the power of the farmer, by an addition of bean meal to the ordinary root 
 food and hay. And though, as a general rule, milk may be produced by 
 these costly and stimulative kinds of food at too great an expense, yet it is a 
 vast acquisition in a particular season, or under special circumstances, to 
 Imow the means of increasing the supply of milk beyond the ordinary 
 quantity. 
 
 The researches of the Professors Thompson are well known. They se- 
 lected two Ayrshire cows, and fed them with malt in various combinations, 
 riiey found that 100 lbs. of barley, hay, and grass, produced 8.17 lbs of milk, 
 and that the same quantity of jnalt and hpy produced 7.95.of milk; the 
 former yielding 1.95 lbs. of butter, and the latter 1.92. Now, though this 
 was not at all satisfactory as to the value or otherwise of malt for milk 
 
FEEDINO OF DAIRY OOWS. 87 
 
 COWS, a proposition never perhaps before seriously entertained, still it shows 
 how food may influence the quantity and quality of the milk, for both the 
 experiments calculate the milk and food as such, t. e. destitute of the water 
 they naturally contain. 
 
 Messrs. Dumas and Boussingault tried a number of very careful and inter- 
 esting experiments on the quantity of milk and its products which would 
 be given by cows fed on different kinds of food. They tried nearly all the 
 combinations usually given, except perhaps bean meal, and the result was 
 that the greatest quantity of milk was given when the cow had green clover 
 in every case, i. e,, that in each instance this yielded the greatest quantity 
 of butter, and, with one exception, the greatest produce also of cheese ; and . 
 that exception was when the cow had been but one day calved, which would 
 account for the abundance of cheesy matter in the milk. The table is so 
 instructive, that we will quote one or two of the items : — 
 
 Food. Days after calving. Milk. 
 
 Potatoes and hay, . . 176 
 
 Hay and green clover, 
 
 Green clover. 
 
 Clover in flower, 
 
 Potatoes, 
 
 Turnips, 
 
 Red beet, 
 
 Milk. 
 
 Butter. 
 
 Cheese. 
 
 9.3 
 
 . 4.8 . 
 
 . 3.3 
 
 8.9 
 
 . 4.5 . 
 
 . 4.0 
 
 9.8 
 
 . . 2.2 . 
 
 . 4.0 
 
 7.8 
 
 . . 3.5 . 
 
 . 3.7 
 
 5.0 
 
 .. 4.0 . 
 
 . 3.4 
 
 6.0 
 
 . 4.2 . 
 
 . 3.0 
 
 5.6 
 
 . . 4.0 . 
 
 . 3.4 
 
 182 
 
 193 
 
 204 
 
 229 
 
 207 
 
 215 
 
 Into their philosophical investigations and reasonings we shall not enter. 
 Mangel wurzel, bean meal, and grains, much increase the milk. Good hay 
 and oat mash much increase the butter, and turnips, though they give a dis- 
 agreeable flavor, greatly increase both. 
 
 To keep the cow as long as possible in milk is sometimes an object. Some 
 cows dry early, — some may be milked through, though always with disad- 
 vantage to both the cow and her calf; both being feeble and impaired, if it 
 is persisted in. In summer weather, however, when cows are very deep 
 milkers, and in high condition, it is not only sometimes advisable but abso- 
 lutely necessary. A cow not put to the bull will hold to her milk much 
 longer than one which is regularly breeding. 
 
 The spaying of milk cows is adopted by the veterinary schools of France, 
 and a great deal is said in its favor by the Academy of Rheims and other 
 authorities. A report on the subject was furnished to that authority by M. 
 P. Charlier, which spoke almost exclusively in its favor. The practice is an 
 old one in Germany and England, supposed for the purpose of increasing the 
 "teding propensities of the animals, but by no means for the purpose to 
 which we refer, and which mainly occupies the attention of the French 
 veterinary school, viz., the prolonging of the period of lactation. The report, 
 which is very voluminous, states a variety of experiments made on cows, 
 old and young — some as far advanced as eighteen years in age ; but, in order 
 
iSS DAIRY HUSBANBBr. 
 
 to realize all the promised advantages, the cow is said to he best from four 
 to eight years of age. The operation is performed on the right side, and 
 does not altogether occupy more than four to ten minutes. It is seldom 
 fatal, unless the cow is in calf, and in some instances the cows are said to 
 go and feed as usual, even after the operation. The conclusions from the 
 report, endorsed by the reward of the society's medal, were — that it in- 
 creases the supply of milk from the animal after a few days — that there is a 
 steady return of milk of the best quality — less liability to fall off milk, and 
 no troublesome tendency to desire the bull — that in eighteen months the 
 milk does not diminish — ^that the feeding tendencies of the cow are much 
 •increased, and the quality of the beef is improved, nay, it is further said, in 
 one dairy (the number of cows is not given) a dilFerence between spayed 
 and unspayed cows in milk was 850 pints per annum ; no great quantity if 
 it were a considerable dairy, and where possibly the best cows were spayed. 
 There is, we must confess, a barbarity about this practice, needless, as we 
 believe, which makes our kinder feelings revolt at the operation, performed 
 for so small advantage after all, over the gentle, patient, harmless milk cow. 
 
 EEARING OF CALVES. 
 
 This is a process more or less belonging to every dairy-farm. Though 
 every cow does not annually produce a calf, "still heifers are usually put to 
 the bull at two years old, and the period of gestation varies from 275 to 290 
 days, so that the old fashioned mode of reckoning three months back in the 
 almanac, is by no means a difficult way of ascertaining the date at which a 
 cow put to the bull may be expected to calve. She is nearly three years old 
 before she produces her first calf Too often no pains nor skill is used in se- 
 lecting a male animal. A neighbor has a bull, and that is enough. A farmer 
 may have no opinion of the neighbor's skill or judgment. He asks nothing 
 about the breed or the blood. He may see him, or he- may not. It is no 
 wonder that such brutes of animals are produced. Encouragement is given 
 to a careless indolent selection of male animals, and bad breeds of cattle are 
 extended and perpetuated. 
 
 Five or six weeks after calving, the cow will again be disposed to take the 
 bull ; but it does not happen that she always holds, and, if the month of 
 June passes before she is bulled, she calves at a period of far less value to 
 the breeder. In some cases a tithe only of the dairyman's cows are in calf. 
 He loses both produce and milk ; for, whether in calf or excitement every 
 twenty-one days, it produces a most unfavorable influence on the milk of the 
 cow and that of her companions. There are a variety of remedies suggested 
 for this sad defect. Bleeding, confinement, and abstinence, at the period of 
 bulling, and omitting to carry the animal to the bull for one return of the 
 alTection, are amongst the most likely resources of the breeder. Some adopt 
 
EEARIN& OF CALVES. 89 
 
 the plan of throwing a pailful of cold water over the loins after the cow has 
 heen served, which it is alleged, gives contractability and tone to the system. 
 It can do no harm ; sometimes a change of bull is advantageous ; it is also 
 desirable to send them in the morning before milking. 
 
 But sometimes the reverse is the case. The cow refuses to come in season. 
 For this a variety of panaceas are proposed, the most reasonable of which is 
 the giving the animal a quart of the milk of a cow in season. At the three 
 weeks' end after this it is alleged she will take the bull, and a second return 
 will be a fruitful conception. We state it as an axiom of old dairymen, — it 
 deserves record as an opinion, for we never saw it in print, and so we leave it. 
 
 To bring up a calf for the butcher is the easiest thing possible. They have 
 only to suck the mother for the requisite number of weeks, till they are of 
 size and fatness required by the taste of the consumer, or the judgment of the 
 buyer. But to rear calves for store purposes is a different matter. Breeding 
 farmers have to bring up perhaps eight or ten calves, with only foin- cows. 
 They buy them in the market, they must necessarily grow them on artificial 
 food, and it is their business to produce them in a favorable state for growth 
 and maturity, on such substitutes for milk as shall be the least expensive 
 and most efficient. Their own calves are easier brought up. 
 
 The materials usually employed are new milk, skimmed iiiilk, meal-por- 
 ridge, linseed-tea, and, for solid food, hay, grass, turnips, meal, potatoes, man- 
 gel wurzel, &c. &c. Some breeders, whose ohject is the calf, and the calf 
 alone, sacrifice every other consideration to it. The breeders of short-horns, 
 whose early maturity require a corresponding early supply of nutritious food, 
 generally apply nature's own provision, and allow the calves to suck either 
 their mother or some other dam, or in some cases more than one, in order 
 that they may develope their precocious and distinctive qualities ; and they 
 often continue this for several months — as many as six to twelve. Haidlen 
 gives the ash of milk in 1000 lbs. — phosphates, 4.55; chloride of potassium, 
 1.83; chloride of sodium, 0.34 ; and free soda, 0.45. We have no analysis 
 of the nitrogen in milk ; but Schlossbuger determined the nitrogen in cheese 
 to be as much as upwards of 7 per cent, in some specimens ; and hence we 
 may infer it is an important element in the milk. 
 
 This is, however, an expensive mode of feeding for those who rear only 
 ordinary cattle for the market ; and some are so " stingy," that 'as soon 
 as the cow ceases to give " beastings," they begin to give the calves 
 skimmed milk. A process of this kind does irreparable injury to the young 
 animal. 
 
 The best mode, in ordinary calves, is to give new milk for at least four- 
 teen days after the calving. Thera are two modes of doing this ; either 
 allowing them to suck the dam, or removing them as soon as calved, and 
 training them to drink in the first instance. For ourselves, we think the 
 taking away the calf both cruel and unnatural. The healthiness of the mo- 
 
90 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 ther, we consider, depends upon it. After calving, it is only necessary to see 
 the anxiety and care for her offspring, which makes her forget all her pain, and 
 diverts her attention from her sufferings ; whereas, if you suhject hej to the 
 gloomy excitement of losing it, it is no wonder that milk fever and inflam- 
 mation so often supervene. We invariably allow the presence of the calf for 
 at least a fortnight. • We allow the mother to lick over the whole of her off- 
 spring ; and we think that a privation of this medicine of nature is a cause 
 of many a valuable animal being lost. After the first fourteen days, we 
 mix one half new and one half skimmed milk for fourteen days more ; this 
 skimmed milk is scalded nearly to the boiling point, set aside to cool, and' 
 given to the animal. One great secret in the successful rearing of calves is 
 to give them frequently small quantities of food at a time. For thi» first 
 fortnight, it ought to be fed, at the very least, four times per day ; and about 
 a quart at a time will be necessary, to be increased afterwards as the animal's 
 wants may require it. Soon after this the skim-milk time commences, when 
 the animal, if properly trained, will begin to eat the solid food. 
 
 Teaching them to eat is a less difficult matter than that of training them to 
 drink. Nature presents to them, first a sucking and then a drinking process ; 
 and, in general, in training them to drink it is necessary to use the fin 
 ger, and introduce this into the mouth, plunging the whole into the milk , 
 the calf sucks the finger, and thus imbibes the milk. By and by the finger 
 is withdrawn, and the calf drinks alone and unassisted. The eating process 
 is somewhat differently taught. A piece of fine hay is tied together with a 
 string, and suspended in the calf-crib ; the calf begins to suck this bunch of 
 hay, and part of it coming out from the string, the calf is gradually taught 
 to eat. 
 
 Some parties tie up the calves by the neck in stalls and other places ; 
 others keep them loose in houses. We pirefer the latter course. The exer- 
 cise the animals take is beneficial to their health j and, on the whole, we 
 much prefer this partial freedom. 
 
 The supply of milk, however, is on most farms limited. If the farm is 
 not confined to dairying purposes, the milk cannot be spared ; and, if new 
 milk cheese is made, it is equally in request. Hence substitutes for milk 
 have necessarily to be adopted. Hay-tea is one of the substitutes some- 
 times used for milk. We think it is generally a poor one. If it has been 
 made from hay grown on very rich alluvial soils, sg much the better; but 
 there is every probability that the bitter extract may, with the color, de- 
 ceive, and lead to the belief that it is more nutritious than it really is. Taking 
 good meadow hay, and deducting 44 per cent, for woody fiber, the saline 
 matter, which varies from 5 to 10 per cent., most of it being held by the or- 
 ganization of the plant, leaves about 50 per cent, of starch, sugar, gum, glu- 
 ten, albumen, legumin, and fatty matter remaining in the tea. Many persons 
 make a point of boiling the hay ; but we are not certaip that there are any 
 
REARING OF CALVES. 91 
 
 great advantages in the practice. Mr. Parkinson's plan is about the best we 
 are acquainted with. His tea is made by placing in a tub a quantity of 
 good hay, — such as has a sweat in the stack, is of a brownish color, and feels 
 clammy like tobacco, — pouring boiling water upon it, and covering it up to 
 keep in the steana. This decoction ought to be prepared twelve hours be- 
 fore using it ; when the milk, being boiled, should be added till the mixture 
 is reduced to a proper heat. 
 
 We believe that food for calves may be prepared of a much more nutritious 
 nature, and much more likely to be of advantage to the producers ; some of 
 these, on which we have successfully reared calves for several years, we 
 shall place before tbe reader : — 
 
 1 . Wheatmeal Porridge. — This is made in the following manner : Boil two 
 gallons of water, and mix a pint of fine flower with cold water, sufficient to 
 make it into the consistency of a thick cream. This should be thoroughly 
 mixed, and put into a bowl capable of holding half a gallon ; a small quantity 
 of the hot water is added to the mixture, and stirred so as gradually to 
 raise the temperature of the flower and water in the bowl, and prevent it 
 from running into lumps. This is plunged into boiling water, and stirred 
 until the whole boils again. This coagulates the mass, and forms a thick nu- 
 tritious porridge It is a great improvement to the mixture if one-sixth 
 part of old skimmed milk is mixed with it; which not only gets scalded it- 
 self, but very materially improves it. Two gallons of the mixture per day 
 will be found sufficient. 
 
 2. Linseed Jelly, combined with the milk, is a very valuable auxiliary. 
 We ourselves have scarcely tried the seed by itself sufficiently to be able to 
 give a very decided opinion upon it ; and we much prefer the pressed seed, 
 in the shape of cake, crushed to a powder; and, for this reason, if we wanted 
 to lay on the fat, we should give them the crushed seed, because its fatty 
 matter would, when cooked, be easily assimilated into animal fat ; but when 
 bone and muscle are to be formed, every pound of fattening matter in the 
 food displaces other substances calculated to build up the animal structure ■ 
 for this reason we most approve of the jelly produced by the crushed cake. 
 
 The proportions of the crushed cake to the water should be as follows : to 
 
 two gallons of water take two pounds of oil-cake bruised or crushed nearly 
 to a powder, sprinkle it in the water, stir, and allow it to boil ten minutes. 
 Cool with skim-milk, if convenient. A rich jelly-like rriass, of the most 
 nourishing kind, is produced, which should be given in a lukewarm state. 
 
 3. Broth Porridge. — This is a somewhat unnatural mixture ; but it is often 
 used very successfully, combined with other mixtures, for feeding calves. 
 The water in which bacon has been boiled is carefully preserved, and diluted 
 with perhaps one-half of its quantity in water. It may be expected that a 
 substance like bacon, from which nitrogenized and phosphoric matter may 
 be expected to be dissolved by the action of boiling, will be of use • but to 
 
92 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 make it alimentary, it is necessary to mix it with a considerable proportion 
 of milk. However unnatural this mixture may appear; how contrary 
 soever to all theories of natural history it may be to give carnivorous matter 
 to herbivorous animals, we may find in it an analogy by no means unimpor- 
 tant, in the disposition evinced by mature animals of this description to 
 select and chew, for hours together, a piece of bone, which they will search 
 for with instinctive pertinacity, and relinquish with reluctance. Is it not be- 
 cause she finds in it the nitrogen or the phosphates denied her in the food 
 upon which she is confined ? And if this be so — if she is guided by her in- 
 stinct to select and choose animal matter, why may not a decoction of animal 
 substance be useful to the calves, in their younger stages, as an auxiliary, and, 
 to a certain extent, a substitute for the beverage which nature has given 
 them, but which man denies them. 
 
 Solid food for calves will soon, however, displace much of the liquid. At 
 five or six weeks old they ought to be trained to eat sliced roots. To do this 
 it is only necessary to supply them in convenient forms in a trough within 
 their reach. Their moments of leisure will be employed in playing with 
 and sucking these pieces, until they begin to masticate them. The roots 
 should, for this purpose, be cut into oblong pieces, one inch broad, half an 
 inch deep, and two inches long ; these shapes are better than either slices or 
 squares, being more adapted to their conformation, and better calculated to 
 make them learn to eat of their own accord. Calves should be reared from 
 the months of September to March. We do not approve of late-bred calves ; 
 if they are reared late, they become tender and require nursing the follow- 
 ing winter. In the months we have named, however, turnips are always 
 plentiful ; or, if mangel-wurzel is cultivated, it will be found a very 
 successful substitute ; although we prefer Swedes. These appear not only 
 to agree with the palate of the animal and to make it thrive, but they ex- 
 ercise a very beneficial influence on its subsequent development. Is it be- 
 cause they contain a large share of the phosphates ? Sprengel makes the 
 relative proportions of the phosphates in the Swede to be nearly six times 
 as great as in the common turnips, and sulphate ten times. 
 Phos. acid. Sulph. add. 
 
 Common turnips . 73 . . 41 ) , „.„ ,, 
 
 Swedes . . 408 .. 890 f P^r 1000 lbs. 
 
 Other auxiliaries are sometimes adopted, such as bean-meal, pea-meal, 
 oat-meal, cattle sago, and Indian meal ; all these being very material aids in 
 rearing calves. It not unfrequently happens, however, that some peculiar 
 root or grain may be purchased at a much cheaper rate than any product of 
 the farm can be grown. 
 
 The degree of confinement to which a young and growing animal ought to 
 be subjected, is an important question. For a Highland Kyloe, to be much 
 confined, would be to give him disease. But a short-horn will bear confine- 
 
REARING OP CALVES. , 93 
 
 ment, and thrive better with it than with excessive liberty. We do not ap- 
 prove of tying an animal constantly by the head when very young. It op- 
 poses natural, healthy exercise, and renders the animal unfit for the purposes 
 of life. The writer, who has fattened animals at eighteen months and two 
 years old, which are necessarily very much confined, has had young animals 
 whose supple bone was not able to carry the heavy body, so that their 
 legs have literally broken in getting them away to the slaughter-house. 
 But perfect confinement in the case of calves is much worse. It prevents 
 their growth and healthy development, and is the parent of many diseases. 
 
 Nor should cleanliness be neglected in the food, in the litter, and, above all, 
 in the calf itself. If too hot food is given, the calf will be surfeited, and lose 
 its health and hair j if too cold, it will be starved, and liable to disease ; if 
 sour, it will scour ; and if strongly fermenting dung be allowed to accumu- 
 late where it is kept, it will, ten to one, become disordered in its bowels, a 
 disease which, when once begun, will go through the whole pen of calves, 
 unless the one attacked is at once removed. In this case whitewashing of 
 the house and stall will be necessary daily, and plenty of fresh air should be 
 afforded. 
 
 , To avoid all the dangers, loose confinement in stalls, with the front fasten- 
 ed up, which enables them to walk about, without escaping, and allows 
 them company, without actual contact, is by far the best. The open cause- 
 way before the stalls will afiford them plenty of air aud light, while their 
 constant trampling will keep the manure beneath them from fermenting. 
 They will then only require to be well littered; for it will too much expose 
 them to be too frequently cleaned out in winter. They will have at all 
 times a warm bed below, with plenty of air above, and the litter will be so 
 consolidated, that it will never putrify so as to be either objectionable or in- 
 convenient. 
 
 In feeding stock the .worst of all policies is to stint the calf of food in its 
 early stages. That calf may be said to be always fat, which never looses 
 its first layer of fat ; and as the difference is often a question in after-fatten- 
 ing, of some six months' keep, there can be no question that it is of the 
 greatest importance to keep it well at first. 
 
 To give the calf food easy of digestion, and suited to its feeble stomach in 
 early life — to allow it especially its mother's milk — the beestings — and the 
 soothing influence of its mother's tongue — to wean it from new milk slowly 
 and gradually and cautiously, and with a plentiful allowance of good sweet 
 hay, are the real elements of success in calf breeding; and this, with proper 
 attention to air, warmth, exercise, and cleanliness, are all that is required in 
 the proper management of young calves. 
 
94 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CATTLE-FEEDINS. 
 
 It might be supposed that in a pastural country like this, when fat has 
 ceased to be a luxury at the tables of the gi'eat, and has become a necessary 
 of life to the mass of the population, that all the modes of fatfening cattle 
 would be so well known, that a tyro might be able to describe them. But 
 they are only beginning to be investigated in their main element. Every- 
 body knows that rich alluvial pasturage, tliat linseed cake and Swede tur- 
 nips, that combinations of hay and bean-meal, and ground com, with a dozen 
 kinds of roots, will feed cattle sooner or later. But the question now is sim- 
 ply one of economy — How can the largest number of pounds of beef be produced 
 at the least possible cost ? This is the real question still unsettled, and on this 
 we will proceed to show the present extent of our knowledge. 
 
 First, the grazier must select such animals as will lay on fat rapidly ; 
 and, by a physiological law, as we have seen, there are those which will 
 soonest attain maturity so as to be fit for feeding. We stop not now to ex- 
 amine whether or not the two principles of taking on fat early as well as 
 rapidly are necessarily connected — though it is veiy probable they are — and 
 that a tendency to lay on fat will show itself at a very early period of the 
 animal's history ; though it may possibly be a mere result of the breeder's 
 skill to obtain the two qualities combined. 
 
 Now, every good grazier knows an animal which' will thrive, that being a 
 simple matter of judgment. A skillful man will select out of a drove, five, 
 or ten, or twenty animals, and nineteen of the twenty will be the best graz- 
 iers for his particular farm. The eye guides him partially — the signs we 
 have described in our chapter on the breeds of cattle also — ^but more than 
 all, he is directed by the touch. 
 
 Having selected the animal, the mode of feeding him is to turn him ont 
 into a grass field skirting a river — if such be within the grazier's power — 
 where alluvium of ages has been washed into the soil so deep that the mots 
 of the herbage cannot find its bottom, and so firmly comminuted as to admit 
 of the minutest filaments of the radicles of the plants to penetrate it with fa- 
 cility, so porous as to admit the air to enter, and the water to filter gently 
 through, and containing its elements in a state of solution so delicate that 
 they are ready for food to the plants which consume them ; but last, though 
 of greater importance than all, having the elements of vegetation in plentiful 
 abundance. Now all men know that on such a soil, in five, six, or even in 
 four months, a lean animal will become fat. He has all he requires, a little 
 attention to see that he is well is all that is needed, from the time of his be- 
 ing placed in the pasture to being taken out to the butcher. There is nei- 
 
CATTLE FBEDINO. 95 
 
 ther labor, nor pains, nor expense incurred. He is worth five pounds more 
 when he is taken out than when he was put in, and that is all the grazier 
 knows or cares for. Now, we shall find out the requisites here fi)r feeding, 
 strictly laid down. There is plenty of fresh and highly nutritive food ; 
 there is scarcely any labor in searching for and obtaining it ; with water, 
 and shelter, and warmth ; and also, plenty of air, and freedom from con- 
 straint. 
 
 Now, this is what the feeder must aim at in his winter-fed cattle. They 
 cannot feed in the open air ; the cold and wet would deprive him of the 
 flesh as fast as the food laid it on. Here he must provide Shelter. Now, one 
 of the controversies of cattle feeding in winter is, which is the best mode of 
 providing this. The Scotch farmer loudly contends for full and perfect lib- 
 erty to the animal. If he is too warm he will sweat, and if too closely con- 
 fined he will fret and murmur ; and he declares that practice has decided 
 that they should be fatted in open places ; a sheltered shed they may have, 
 but nothing beyond it. The midland counties man says this exposure is 
 dreadful. It wastes their beef, and renders them subject to disease, and in- 
 volves long feeding. Another class again insist on the tying up of the ani- 
 mals as injurious to their health ; that a little exercise, but absolute confine- 
 ment, are equally necessary ; and that they should have shelter with free- 
 dom : these two classes are controverting the merits of box and stall feeding. 
 
 And both of them are right. Take a Highland Scot, consider his wild 
 habits, his long stray of mountain and glen, his wide-spread pasture of peat 
 and heather, from which he could in his native fastness smell afar off his 
 friend or his enemy man ! Tie him by the head and he becomes fretful or 
 furious; he will pine, and fret, and worry himself; while in his gregarious 
 state, with a herd of his fellows in open yards, or sheds, he will thrive. 
 Nay, he has a nature which will lay on fat despite the cold and wet, as the 
 rye among plants can assimilate food from the barrenest soil ; so he has a 
 natural shelter in his hair and constitution, for which the owner of more 
 delicate and tender animals will not give him credit, forgetting that the 
 Scotchman has a different animal to deal with in his shed-feeding from the 
 short-horn. 
 
 The short-horn feeder, on the contrary, possesses a tame, quiet, gentle 
 lethargic animal, which shows that universal mark of good breeding in men 
 and animals, he is always guiet. He will neither pine at never beholding 
 the light, nor feel the want of exercise if he never leaves his stall, provided 
 he has food and comfort in plenty. Nay, he will hardly take the exercise 
 necessary to keep his limbs in healthy action. But keep him from the cold 
 and wet, prevent the blast from passing over him ; he likes protection, and 
 thrives best in boxes. 
 
 Take a Devon, or, if you like, a Sussex ox. He is large and cumbrous • 
 but he is active. Give him liberty, and he will roam and harass himself- 
 
96 DAIRY HUSBANDET. 
 
 but he is tame enough to keep to his stall without pain or fretting. He re- 
 quires a stall. 
 
 The temperature at which it is desirable to keep feeding animals, is ^ rpat- 
 ter of more importance than might be inferred from the apparently small 
 amount of investigation bestowed upon it. The question is, are we to run 
 the risk of a wasting expenditure of food by perspiration under excessive 
 heat, — or are we to induce them to waste it, to keep up animal heat, by ex- 
 posure to too much cold ? Nay, will not different classes of feeding animals 
 be subject to different consequences, from the same degree of heat ? — In the 
 same cow-house there may be some too hot and others too cold, from their 
 different constitutions. Oxen generally sweat at a temperature in which 
 heifers thrive admirably; this happens at any rate till Christmas, after 
 which they seem to be able to bear the same degree of heat as female ani- 
 mals. 
 
 H. S. Thompson, Esq., to whose indefatigable and well directed efforts we 
 have before alluded, tied up two sets of feeding bullocks, — eight into a war- 
 mer shed than the rest. They had the same quantity and kind of food ; but 
 those in the warmer shed made more beef than those in the colder, showing 
 that warm air, as well as warm food, were highly favorable to fattening 
 short-horns ; which breed, we believe, he invariably fattens. The tempera- 
 ture he aims at is about 55'^ to 60" of Fahrenheit ; an increase of this, caused 
 them to get off their food, and lose their tone and appetite. 
 
 Stillness, with the limitations given in our remarks on shelter, is n^ces 
 sary to successful feeding. This is well known to geese feeders, who even 
 nail them to the boards ; and it was shown very strikingly by Mr. Childers, 
 M.P., in his experiments on shed-feeding, and by Lord Bathurst, on stall- 
 feeding sheep. An animal in the very effort of searching and securing his 
 food, expends the principle necessary to make fat ; hence it is necessary 
 that liis turnips be brought to him instead of driving him to the turnips. 
 They are cut and placed before him, that he may have as little effort as pos- 
 sible in the operation of chewing, and he has ample allowance of room, so 
 that when he has fed, he may lie down and sleep. 
 
 It is a question whether animals feed fastest in the dark or not. There 
 can be no doubt whatever that any thing which distracts their attention, 
 which excites action, or which produces nervous irritation, is opposed to 
 fattening ; and, as darkness will induce sleep, inaction, and promote quiet- 
 ness, it is so far favorable ; but it is not so easy to have darkness and suffi- 
 ciency of fresh air at the same time, and therefore the best possible state, 
 perhaps, is to have the feeding-houses rather in a state of shady gloom than 
 in absolute darkness. A certain amount of nervous energy is necessary to 
 give tone to the vital powers, and, beyond ttiis, repose and quietness are 
 easily attained by a simple gloom, while shelter from flies and heat in sum- 
 
CATTLE FEEDING. 97" 
 
 mer, and from blasts, wet, and extreme cold in winter, should be carefully 
 provided. 
 
 Abundance of good food, and regularity offcedmg,a.Te essentials in all kinds 
 of fattening. Though it is not desirable to allow the animals to have food 
 standing before them when they are filled, they should never, on the other 
 har.d, experience a single feeling of want. The usual hours of feeding should 
 be strictly adhered to, for the two-fold purpose of inducing regular periods of 
 sleep and for supplying the system with food at the first call of appetite. 
 
 Variety of food is a most essential element of rapid fattening ; and it is not 
 far from the truth to say that all kinds of food are equally fattening, if they 
 are given in sufficient variety. If roots, grain, and hay, be changed every 
 few days, the appetite is never cloyed ; and the whole are devoured with a 
 relish which develops fat in the most rapid manner. 
 
 The formation of fat is the work of the grazier. His animals are general- 
 ly full grown, or nearly so, and, though there may be a small increase of 
 muscle, still the bulk of the material of increased weight is fat and not flesh. 
 In this country, food to be palatable, — to be consumable, — must be fat : un- 
 less it has this recommendation it is absolutely unsaleable. The appetites 
 of the higher and the necessities of the lower classes, urge on the demand for 
 fatted beef, mutton, and pork ; and any brought to market in a state other 
 than fat, is looked upon as carrion. Hence the grazier must supply the 
 whole of his animals in a fat state to the consumer ; and therefore it is not 
 the number of animals, nor their weight he has to consider, but he has to 
 provide for them the means of fattening before they can be brought to the 
 consumer. 
 
 The saccharine matter of vegetables, and their starch, will supply the 
 means of fuel-food ; the fatty matter will produce ready formed fat to de- 
 posit ; and the albuminous matter will afford the flesh which waste is con- 
 tinually throwing into the excretory system, and for the small additions 
 which may be necessary to the muscles, to carry the requisite amount of fat. 
 It is not our intention to enter into the disputes between two great schools 
 of physiologists,' as to whether the fat was formed by transmutation of the 
 sugar and starch of the food, or whether it consisted of the ready formed fat 
 of the food on which the animals fed. Without for one moment pretending 
 to settle this point, it is at any rate desirable so far to supply both saccharine 
 and fatty matters, as shall give the system the choice of selection. 
 
 Preparation of food for the animal's stomach, or a system of cooking, is a 
 very important question. Steaming hay, potatoes, and turnips, has been 
 tried very carefully in Scotland, and failed. For cattle, at least, it is useless ; 
 how valuable soever it may be for pigs. It is pretty certain, however, that, 
 with certain combinations, all that a feeder can desire is attained by the 
 cooking of flax-seed. 
 The fat of animals is strictly analogous to vegetable oil ; its elements are 
 
98 DAIRY HnSBANDBY. 
 
 much of the same character as sugar, starch, and gum, and no donht is en- 
 tertained, by physiologists and chemists, that the fatty matter (vegetable 
 oil) in plants, is assimilated into animal fat, with but little change. The 
 elements of those compounds severally are : — 
 
 Animal fat 
 Sugar. Starch. Gum. Mucilage. (stearine). 
 
 Carbon 12 12 12 24 71 
 
 I Hydrogen 11 10 10 19 69 
 
 Oxygen 11 10 .... 10 19 7 " 
 
 The oil contained in many seeds is given by Professor Johnston : — 
 
 oil per cent. Oil per cent. 
 
 Flax-seed 11 to 22 say 17 White mustard 36 to 38 say 37 
 
 Hemp-seed 14 „ 25 „ 19 Sweet almond .... 40 „ 54 „ 47 
 
 Rape-seed 40 „ 70 ,, 55 Bitter do 28 „ 46 „ 37 
 
 This would naturally indicate that any of these seeds would, so far as 
 they were palatable, be \iseful ; and when linseed contains as much as seven 
 per cent, of mucilage, ten per cent, of sugar, and fifteen of soluble albumen, 
 it is clearly indicated as being a seed most valuable for feeding and nourish- 
 ing purposes. 
 
 Various attempts have been made to adapt it to the feeding of cattle. 
 There was some difBculty in grinding it by ordinary mills, as it clogged up 
 the teeth ; and when given to animals either alone, or combined with con- 
 siderable quantities of corn, meal, or other feeding matter, the effect on the 
 animals was purgative, and but few breeders persevered in the use of the 
 seed alone. The demand for the oil, however, induced the crushing of the 
 seeds to obtain it, and the refuse left was found to be very valuable as feed- 
 ing material ; while the portability of oil cake, its cleanliness, and capability 
 of being long kept, made it a general and desirable food, both for growing 
 and feeding stock. The oil abstracted, the cake contains, according to the 
 same authority : — 
 
 Water 
 
 10.05 
 
 Mucilage . . . . . 
 
 39.10 
 
 Albumen and gluten 
 
 22.14 
 
 Oil 
 
 11.93 
 
 Husks . . . . . 
 
 9.53 
 
 Saline matter and sand 
 
 7.25 
 
 We do not see exactly how the cake can contain so large a proportion of 
 oil relatively with the seed; but it is probable that the seed had originally 
 contained a large proportion of oil, and that it had been but indifferently 
 crushed. Good English-made cake, however, has been thoroughly estab- 
 lished as one of the best of fattening products ; and the extensive farmers of 
 
CATTLE FEEDING. 99 
 
 Lincolnshire and other places expend upon a single farm, in one year, as 
 much as £400 to £500, for this article of food j and so well understood is its 
 fertilizing character, that many landowners are willing to make themselves, 
 and their incoming tenants, chargeable with proportions of the money so ex- 
 pended, at the rate of one-half to one-third. It is the opinion of some of the 
 best farmers, that when cake can be purchased at the same price per ton, in 
 pounds, that beef and mutton can be sold at per stone in shillings, it will be 
 paid for in the cattle and animals fed, without reference to the manure.* 
 The price of cake, however, depends on no such element of calculation ; the 
 demand for it has increased far beyond that of the oil, and in some seasons 
 it has been so great, that the former became an object of commerce rather 
 than the latter. 
 
 Attempts have been occasionally made to render the uncrushed seed avail- 
 able by a cooking process, but it has been generally found more adapted for 
 calves than for store stock or for fattening ; where used at all for the latter 
 purpose, it has only been to supply a deficiency in turnips. 
 
 The most decisive step, however, in the use of cooked linseed, was taken 
 by Mr. Warnes, of Trimraingham, near North- Walshara, in Norfolk, in 
 1841, when a discussion was appointed by the Farmers' Club there, on feed- 
 ing cattle with linseed cake. Mr. Warnes commenced by inquiring into 
 the nature of cake. He immediately commenced a series of experiments 
 with flaxseed in various forms — both crushed, steeped, bailed, and cooked in 
 various ways. He also tried the boiling of barley and other food on various 
 animals. He ultimately adopted a mode of feeding, on what was called by 
 him flaxseed compound. He carried out, in connection with his experi- 
 ments, growing, dressing, and preparing the flax, the feeding of cattle with 
 the prepared seed in boxes as antagonist to tying up, and the summer grazing 
 of cattle by soiling. 
 
 His cooking apparatus is so simple that it is managed by a blind man, 
 whose happy countenance bespeaks neither over-weening anxiety, nor un- 
 remunerated toil. The apparatus consists of two cast metal boilers, fixed in 
 brick, and having a fire-place beneath them ; the water is made to boil 
 before the flax-seed is put in. The seed is crushed by a very powerful im- 
 plement, consisting of two cylinders, one of them being of large diameter ■ 
 the are made to press upon each other in their revolutions by two lunar 
 springs, and two men will thoroughly grind two bushels in ten minutes ; at 
 this rate the men are able to work the whole day. The mill is, however, 
 capable of being reduced to the capacity of one man. The crushed flaxseed 
 is sprinkled upon the boiling water at the rate of one gallon of seed to eight 
 gallons of water ; great stress is laid on sprinkling the seed very gradually, 
 otherwise it is apt to adhere in lumps, and cleave to the sides or bottom of 
 the boiler. With this precaution, however, Mr. Warnes assures us he has 
 
 * The pound sterling is $4.85 j the shilling 24 cents ; the stone weight 14 lbs. 
 
100 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 had no instance, for several years, of this occurrence. This mixture is 
 boiled six minutes, and for that period is slightly stirred ; at the end of that 
 time it is found to be a thick gelatinous mass. In one minute after this 
 the mass became more mucilaginous, and was improved. Nine bushels of 
 cut pea straviT were then placed very gradually, and by one bushel at a time, 
 in a tub twenty-eight inches high, the liquid jelly was now taken out in a 
 scoop, poured upon it, and as each addition was made the whole was rammed 
 down by a kind of beater, more for the purpose of mixing the mass, and 
 confining the heat, than for any other object. The present cost of the ani- 
 mals in flaxseed is 3s. per head per week. In addition to this they have 
 also about one bushel of cut Swedes per day. 
 
 Mr. Warnes occasionally mixes his compound with meal. This, when 
 used, is also sprinkled over the boiling mucilage. So soon as the first boil- 
 ing was nearly emptied from the boiler, it was again filled with water, and 
 was ready for another boil, when required. 
 
 As a test of its value, Mr. Warnes furnished the following remarks and 
 experiments illustrative of the effects of his system : — 
 
 " Flaxseed," he says, " has five essential properties, viz., mucilage, oil, al- 
 bumen, gluten, and sugar. The shell, or external crust, is the hardest of all 
 seeds, and the most difficult to break in pieces ; but not too hard for the 
 miller, who has every particle ground almost to powder, in order that all the 
 oil may be expressed, which it could not be if coarsely crushed. This is 
 demonstrated by the cake, in which the presence of seed is scarcely appa- 
 rent. To a similar state seed for the cattle compounds ought to be reduced ; 
 otherwise some, at least, of the properties above described will pass off" with- 
 out benefit to the fattening animals. This the scientific grazier will discover 
 by the excrements, in which he will find sufficient cause for grinding, not only 
 flaxseed, but all grain or pulse, if possible, into flour. From researches like 
 these the profitable returns for grazing upon my premises, may be dated. " 
 
 The expenses of this copper, with the whole working apparatus for 80 or 
 100 head of stock, will not be more than four psunds. 
 
 A part of Mr. Warnes' system is the feeding in boxes, the growth of flax- 
 seed, the manufacture of the fibre into flax, and the soiling of cattle with 
 green food and compound in summer. It would swell this article much be- 
 yond its legitimate limits, if the box system were more fully described. It 
 may suffice to say, that the boxes at Mr. Warnes' have been put up very 
 cheaply — they form two sides of what has formerly been a fold-yard. The 
 sides have had a roof put along the wall, supported by pillars of wood, and 
 divided by rails of any ordinary wood ; the front next the yard being in- 
 closed by two gates. The box is 8 feet 6 inches square ; and adjoining the 
 wall is a passage from which the food is given in troughs, which are made 
 to slide up or down as the manure accumulates. The manure is never carted 
 out until it is taken to the fields ; and, as the boxes are walled for one foot 
 
CATTLE FEEDING. 101 
 
 from the bottom, there is not the slightest escape of the liquid manure or of 
 the ammonia, and therefore it is peculiarly rich, from this circumstance and 
 from the stimulating food supplied to the fattening animals. 
 
 Much has been said as to the dirt and filth, ajid unnatural state of the ani- 
 mals ; but their condition is precisely the reverse, in every respect ; they 
 are quiet, have exercise sufficient for healthy secretion, can feed at leisure, 
 and, whenever we observed them, they were clean and free from smell, and 
 every thing objectionable. The fact of the treading, and thorough consoli- 
 dation by the animals' feet, prevents fermentation, and the consequent evo- 
 lution of gases which would take place if mere stall-feeding were practiced. 
 On the whole we think there are many more valid reasons in favor of than 
 against box- feeding. 
 
 The direction given to men's minds by the experiments of Mr. Warnes, 
 induced trials with all kinds of modifications of flaxseed-cooking ; but the 
 one which has obtained the greatest amount of favor is that adopted by Mr. 
 Marshall, near Thirsk. The great difference between Mr. Marshall's plan 
 and that of Mr. Warnes, is, that the material cooked has not the heat applied 
 to it directly, but to the outside of the boiler in which it is to be cooked, so 
 that no direct application of the fire shall take place to burn the mucilaginous 
 matter. Mr. Marshall insists that, to cook the material properly, it must be 
 boiled at least two hours. 
 
 His mode is this : — one pound of flaxseed is boiled for two or three hours 
 in about one and a half gallons of water. Five pounds of straw are chopped, 
 say one inch long, and mixed with two and a half pounds of ground oat or 
 barley meal very intimately, which is then placed on a floor of flags or bricks, 
 and the boiled seed poured upon the mass, and turned, and then allowed to 
 cool one or two hours, when it is given to the cattle. 
 
 The cost of the apparatus or fitting will be about £50 (or $250). On the 
 whole, we think it very desirable to adopt one or the other process in all 
 situations where an increased quantity, and better quality of manure is a de- 
 sideratum, not to mention the more profitable return, as exhibited in both 
 the systems described. 
 
 Mr. Warnes, altogether unprejudiced in favor of his own peculiar system, 
 has been experimenting on the mode recommended by some graziers of 
 
 steeping the linseed-meal in cold water for some twelve or fourteen hours 
 
 when a slight mucilaginous deposit was the result. The experiment will 
 no doubt be carefully and accurately made under his direction ; but, we con- 
 fess, our prepossessions are in favor of the cooked materials. 
 
102 DAIRY HtrSBANDBT. 
 
 The following is a plan of Mr. Wames' shed-toxes for cattle-feeding: — 
 
 1. Coooking-house, 20 feet by 16 feet. 4, 4. Boxes, averaging 90 square feet each. 
 
 2. Pump. 6. Fodder-house, with tajik under tKe floor. 
 
 3. Storehouse for roots, Ssc. 6. Passage, 4 feet. 
 
 Mr. Thompson, of Moat Hall, Yorkshire, one of the most skillful and ac- 
 curate investigators we know, made some very important experiments on 
 the relative value of hot and cold preparation of flax-seed. He took two ani- 
 mals, and fed the one on hot Jind the other on cold food. He had both 
 weighed before he started, and both again weighed at the expiration of six 
 weeks. The animal fed on cold food weighed, when put up, 107 stone 11 
 lbs. (1509 lbs.); that fed on hot, 108 stone 71bs. (1533 lbs.) At the end of 
 six weeks the first had gained 40 lbs. ; while the last, the one fed on hot 
 food, had gained 71 lbs. To guard against the one having any special apti- 
 tude to fatten which the other did not possess, he reversed the order ; and 
 then it turned out that the animal now fed on cold food, and before on hot, 
 gained 53 lbs. ; while the other, now fed on hot food, gained 71 lbs. 
 
 But not only on the animals did the results of cooked food show itself in 
 this striking manner ; for, while one fed on hot food had only 80 lbs. of 
 Swedish turnips per day, the one fed on cold food was not satisfied till his 
 feed was increased 87 lbs. of turnips in the same tir^e, showing a greater 
 consumption of other food to make up for the want of heat ! 
 
 CHAPTER Vm. 
 
 DISEASES OF CATTLE AND THEIR REMEDirS. 
 
 This is perhaps the most unsatisfactory division on which a writer on 
 cattle can pretend to write. There are more cattle destroyed than cured by 
 the strange quackery and drenching pursued by their over-officious owners j 
 and to write anything to encourage a system so ruinous is to perpetuate the 
 evil. The first thing a dairyman or grazier does is to get a long list of " re- 
 
DISEASES OF CATTLE AND THEIR REMEDIES. 103 
 
 • 
 
 ceipts" inserted in a book, classified or not, but all under the names of cer- 
 tain diseases. A sow falls ill. She has the yellows, or the staggers, or the 
 worms, not because there are any clear and decided symptoms, but because 
 the owner fancies it is so, and his specific is administered. He watches in- 
 tently, and no good effect is produced ; he runs for another medicne pre- 
 scribed by another hand ; the one opposing, and perhaps counteracting the 
 other. One neighbor looks in, and perhaps another; each advises a medi- 
 cine, as empirical as that of the owner, and all must be given, until the 
 symptoms increase and get so bad that the village quack is sent for, who is 
 more clever than the rest, because he has a larger range of " receipts," and 
 he adds his quota of drugs, until the beast dies, poisoned by medicine ! 
 
 Now, so long as unprofessional men will continue to prescribe and treat 
 obstinate and complicated complaints ; and so long as the public press will 
 pander to the receipt-mania, there is no hope of any amendment. Certainly 
 we shall lend no aid to the system. 
 
 But there are some simple and manifest ailments where the farmer may 
 himself administer simple medicines ; and there are some cases of emergen- 
 cy, too, when it may be necessary to do something, till scientific aid can be 
 obtained. To these cases we will allude. We will take the complaints in 
 the order of their frequency. 
 
 This is a complaint common to all kinds of cattle. It proceeds from cold 
 and exposure, and is accompanied by low fever. The beast is more or less 
 off his food. His coat is staring, his eye dull, his nose dry, his back sore, he 
 will flinch from the touch, and his teeth feel loose. It is an attack of felon. 
 He requires rousing by cordials. Let him be housed and given a drink : 1 
 oz. of turmeric, 1 oz. fenugreek, 1 oz. liquorice, 1 oz. aniseed powder, in a 
 quart of ale ; and he will generally recover ; if not, repeat the dose. A 
 very common and a very safe process is also to divide the nerve of the under 
 side of the tail. This relieves the back, and is thus performed : Peel for a 
 soft place in the under side of the tail. The knobs are the joints, the soft 
 place is the bone. Cut the skin across at the soft part, and it will bleed for 
 eight or ten minutes. Tie up the tail with a piece of linen cloth, and great 
 relief will be afforded. This is not mentioned in any work we ever met with, 
 but we have seen its efficacy in hundreds of instances. 
 
 - HOVF.N, BLOWN, OK " OVEE-FTJLL." 
 
 Sometimes a change of food, or a feed of wet clover, or potatoes, greedily 
 eaten, will induce fermentation in the stomach instead of digestion. The 
 sides will be blown up, until the stomach presses on the skin, with a force 
 which renders it hard to the fingers. For this the probang is by far the 
 
104 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 test remedy. Introduce this into the stomach ty the throat, and the foul 
 air will immediately escape. This instrument is not always at hand, and 
 the heast will lie down, and the disease may continue until the walls of 
 the stomach are ruptured. In thesS cases an ounce of ammonia will often 
 give relief. A pint of vinegar we have known to effect it ; but the safest 
 remedy is a pint of linseed oil. It lubricates the mouth of the stomach, 
 and assists the air to escape by both the orifices, otherwise closed up. 
 Gentle exercise will be useful ; but all violence, and, above all, such hor- 
 rid drenches, as tar and salt, with the idea of making them eject their 
 saliva, can only do harm. It is sometimes necessary to cut into the stom- 
 ach, an operation a veterinary surgeon alone can perform. 
 
 A beast will often get a turnip or potato fast in its throat, which will re- 
 sist all efforts to get it either up or down ; and, what is worse, when once 
 this has taken place, the beast will always after be liable to the same acci- 
 dent. The mouth should first be carefully examined, to see that the turnip 
 cannot be extracted with the hand ; if it can be, this is the best mode by far 
 for effecting its extraction. If not, the probang, invented by Dr. Munro, is 
 absolutely necessary. Let a little sweet oil be first given to the animal, and 
 then let the probang be carefully and cautiously put down, the cup end down- 
 ward ; if the turnip offers much resistance it must again be withdrawn, and 
 by this its position may be changed. Generally it will go down with a 
 very slight effort, and sometimes if may be got up by running the thumbs 
 up each side of the neck, and gently pressing with the hand. 
 
 This, though not a disease, is rightly classed amongst them, because it is 
 strictly a subject of medical and surgical treatment ; and, though a natural 
 operation, is always accompanied by more or less danger. In old cows, or 
 cows after their first and second calves, if the right presentation takes place, 
 the animal will generally calve without mechanical help. It often happens, 
 that cows which calve unobserved, do the best, and we know a very careful 
 and successful grazier who makes a point of never interfering in ordinary 
 cases. There is certainly more danger from premature assistance than from 
 delay. Usually the waters are the first symptoms of decided labor. A thin 
 filmy bag first breaks, and after this the cow will sometimes eat, and seem 
 comfortable for an hour. The second is larger and thicker, and envelopes 
 the feet of the calf. "When the feet are there, or one begins to protrude, the 
 other may be sought for, and when both are brought forward, mechanical 
 assistance may safely be rendered, if the head is found between and above 
 them. A cow-tie may be strung round each foot, and certainty of the head 
 
DISEASES OP CATTLE AND THEIR REMEDIES. 105 
 
 being tetween them is a signal for a slow and gentle pull, avoiding anything 
 like force, and the pulling being downward towards the udder. But, above 
 all things, give time. The muscles relax and give way for the calf if proper 
 time is allowed. When calving is over, follow the directions formerly given 
 in regard to the management of the mother and produce, — the latter should 
 suck, and the mother lick the calf. 
 
 False presentations will sometimes take place ; — a single foot, or the head, or 
 the hind legs. In either of these cases, the operator m ust wait for one of the 
 throes being over, and then gently put back the calf, and introduce his hand, 
 which has been previously oiled, and bring forward the legs which are want- 
 ing. If this cannot easily be done, a veterinary surgeon will be necessary. 
 When the hind legs alone are presented, it is only necessary to proceed in 
 the usual way. In cases of difficulty, of malformation in the mother, of wa- 
 ter in the head, or monstrosity in the calf, it is always best to call in a vete- 
 rinary surgeon. 
 
 Some parties have a practice of giving every cow a calving drink. We 
 uniformly prefer, as we said, nature's medicine, the licking of the calf, to 
 any and all others which can be given. If it has been a long and protracted 
 labor, a drink of warm gruel will be useful. If the cow refuses to lick the 
 calf, which heifers of their first calves will sometimes do, it is seldom neces- 
 sary to do more than run the hand over the newly-dropped calf, and then 
 pass it across the mouth and lips of the mother. 
 
 .Mortion is a habit with some individual cows, and is often the result of 
 the presence of blood, or bad smells, arising from putrid matter decaying 
 near the cow-houses or yards ; and once introduced into a cow-house, it 
 often so affects the imaginations of the rest, as to become epidemic. Let 
 the cow and the remains of the calf be instantly removed from the rest, and 
 kept alone and quiet. Chloride of lime should be plentifully sprinkled near 
 the stall where she was, and the whole of the herd should have their noses 
 besmeared with tar. 
 
 Retention of the placenta, oj- failing to cleanse, after calving, sometimes oc- 
 curs ; and it requires great care to prevent its retention, when the expulsion 
 does not take place in a few hours after calving. It indicates weakness, and 
 want of tone in the uterus. A mild stimulant may be given — nothing better 
 than an infusion of chamomile flowers, say two haiidsful in a quart of water, 
 added to a quart of good boiled ale, and, if necessary, an injection of soap 
 suds, to keep open the bowels and prevent inflammatory action. If it re- 
 sists all efforts, and begins to putrefy, it will be necessary to consult a veteri- 
 nary surgeon. 
 
 RED WATER. 
 
 This is a complaint which frequently attacks cows in> summer ; and, on 
 some pastures, is a regular occurrence. If taken in an early stage a dose of 
 5* 
 
106 DAIKY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 eight ounces of Epsom salts, dissolved in a pint of water, will almost invari- 
 ably set the beast right. If not at hand, a pound of common salt may be 
 given, and the dose repeated, in case of need. 
 
 QUAaTEB. FELON. 
 
 Inflammatory fever, or quarter-ill, is one of the most obstinate diseases 
 with which cattle can be afflicted ; and, though odd insteinces of cure have 
 been reported, they are extremely few, unless the disease has been attacked 
 in a very early stage. It is also highly contagious, and will sometimes go 
 through an entire herd of calves before they are a year old, for it seldom oc- 
 curs after that period. The calf gets off its food, and becomes lame or stiff 
 in one foot. The foot may be examined, and no cause of lameness dbcov- 
 ered, but soon the disease has become general ; air bubbles are formed be- 
 tween the skin and muscles, and there is a crackling sensation to the hand, 
 on passing it over the skin, especially in the legs. Inflammatory fever is dis- 
 organizing the body. 
 
 Preventives, as the seton in the dewlap, bleeding in autumn, doses of 
 dyer's madder, &c., are favorite remedies. The seton can do no harm, — ^it 
 may be tried ; but no specific, either remedy or prevention, has yet been 
 discovered. 
 
 FOUL IN THE FOOT. 
 
 This is a tiresome worrying disease, to which large heavy milk cows are 
 specially subject ; and is to the cow, what foot-rot is to the sheep. There is 
 inflammatory action between the claws ; it begins to discharge fetid matter, 
 and is a source of pain and irritation, which often dries up the milk, and is 
 often a painful and annoying complaint to cure. Let the foot first be well 
 cleaned and fomented with warm water, and all loose flesh be cut or clipped 
 off. The foot may then be poulticed for one night with flaxseed-meal poul- 
 tice, and then again fomented and anointed with tar ; and, if it should smell 
 very offensively, a little charcoal, or a few drops of chloride of lime, may be 
 added to the water. Next day the inflammation will be reUeved, and 
 brought out externally by the tar, and the foot may be then dressed with 
 the butyr of antimony (chloride of antimony) night tmd morning, and the 
 tar applied afterwards. The foot should be confined in a boot or stocking, 
 and kept free from dirt. A little salts or linseed oil should be given, to keep 
 the bowels in a state of gentle activity. 
 
 MILK FEVER. 
 
 This IS a common complaint in cows which are deep milkers, at least in 
 summer. Prevention is all the farmer has to do with, for the cure, if any, 
 
DISEASES OF CATTLE AND THEIK REMEDIES. lOY 
 
 must he left in the hands of the veterinary surgeon. He must, if he see the 
 udder distended, milk the cow before calving regularly three times a day; 
 she must be kept as cool and quiet as possible, and have mashes of bran 
 only, for a few days after calving. This is cooling and somewhat laxative, 
 and, if the udder should be hard, which it should not be after this treatment, 
 let it be rubbed with marsh mallow ointment. A gentle dose of purgative 
 medicine may be given if the cow is in very high condition, and she should 
 be driven a few miles every day before calving. With these precautions 
 there is little danger, at least of its being fatal. 
 
 THE YELLOWS OB JAUNDICE. 
 
 This is easy distinguishable. White cattle are peculiarly subject to it, 
 and it makes its first appearance by a yellowness of the eyes and under the 
 anus ; the bowels become costive, the teeth loose, the appetite gone, and 
 rapid weakness sets in. Give — 4 oz. common salt, J oz. Barbadoes aloes, 1 
 dr. ginger, 1 quart home-brewed ale, made into gruel. 
 
 LOSS OF CUD. 
 
 All ruminating animals are sometimes subject to this. The stomach, with 
 a sort of convulsive action, throws the half masticated food back into the 
 mouth to be re-chewed, and sometimes this healthy contractile tone of the 
 stomach is lost. Give — 6 dr. Barbadoes aloes, 6 oz. common salt, 3 dr. gin- 
 ger, 1 oz. alspice, in a quart of gruel. 
 
 INFLAMMATION. 
 
 This is a disease known by coldness of the horns aLd extremities, gener- 
 ally accompanied by much acute and constant pain. All home attempts to 
 cure this disorder will be impotent, — a veterinary surgeon should be at once 
 consulted : the same may be said of staggers, strangury, and a variety of 
 acute disorders. 
 
 PLEUEO-PNEUMONIA 
 
 Is only mentioned to say that pothing like a specific has, so far, been dis- 
 covered. The fearful medicine of a gill of spirits of turpentine and a gill of 
 spirits of sweet nitre seems to be the most successful but desperate remedy. 
 If the animal is fat, there is scarcely a chance of recovery. If the animal is 
 lean, remedial measures may be tried, but they are more likely to fail than 
 to be successful. 
 
108 DAIRT HUSBANDRY 
 
 THE EPIDEMIC, OE SOEE MOUTH AND FEET, 
 
 For SO a disease which affects the mouth with hlisteis and the feet with 
 pain and inflammation, is best known, has lost much of the virulence it pos- 
 , sessed from 1839 to 1844, but still is sometimes troublesome. A dose of 
 Glauber or Epsom salts, in the first stage, with shelter and bran mashes, will 
 generally prevent evil consequences. Should the foot break out, the same 
 treatment will be useful that we advised in the foul of the foot. 
 
 DISEASES DP CALVES. 
 
 If well managed, calves are subject to few diseases, and if starved, neg- 
 lected, or ill managed, they will be scarcely kept alive by medicine. The 
 most fatal disease is the scour or diarrhaa. As it usually proceeds Irom 
 some foreign, often acrid matter, in the bowels, a tablespoonful of sulphur 
 in the milk will generally remove it in due time. If it should continue after 
 this, give a teaspoonful of laudanum and a tablespoonful of tincture of rhu- 
 barb. We once had a calf nearly dead of diarrhoea ; medicine seemed to 
 have no impression upon the obstinate attack. It was dying. We gave it 
 a bottle of port wine, expecting it to be dead by morning. In the morn- 
 ing, however, it was well and crying for its breakfast. A pint of good old 
 porf will often work wonders when all other remedies have failed, both in 
 man and beast. 
 
 COSTIVENESS 
 
 Is sometimes a disease in calves, as well as the opposite extreme. Here 
 it is imdesirable to give medicine, unless it be very severe. A handful of 
 onions, boiled with an ounce of fat bacon, is by far the best remedy, and it 
 never does injury, but is nutritious to the animal even if well. 
 
 Is a complaint to which youpg calves are subject, which have had sour 
 milk given to thera ; and there is often acute pain exhibited, kicking of the 
 belly with the hind legs, pawing, ^c. A cure is generally effected, in a re- 
 markably short time, by a cupful of peppermint water and a teaspoonful of 
 laudanum. 
 
DISEASES OF CATTLE AND THEIR REMEDIES. 109 
 
 The great secret of keeping all animals is, to tend them carefully and keep 
 them well. Let the land said to be subject to disease be well drained and 
 better farmed ; let the bad herbage and cold beds of the cattle be cured, and 
 they will be healthier and thrive better. It is better always to pay the 
 cake-crusher or the miller, than to pay the veterinary surgeon, however 
 skillful he may be. 
 
 In conclusion, treat the cow well and she will be grateful. Let all your 
 proceedings be dictated by humanity and kindness, and a more patient and 
 grateful servant you cannot have. 
 
BT 
 
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 By Louisa .Tobnson 
 
AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS AND 
 MACHINERY, 
 
 Suited to all Countries. 
 FIELD AND GARDEN SEEDS. 
 
 FARMERS, FI.ANTERS AND ITIJGRCH AN TS 
 
 WILL FIND AT THE 
 
 AGRICULTURAL WAREHOUSE 
 
 •F 
 
 A, B- ALLEN & Co., 
 
 189 & 191 HEATER. STREET, NcTV York, 
 
 Tbe largest assortment in America of tools and machines suited to general 
 
 culture. Most of the implements sold by them, are manufactured in 
 
 their own machine shop, under the direct supervision of one of 
 
 the firm, where the best of seasoned timber only is used, 
 
 with iron, steel and other materials of the first quality. 
 
 PloTTS. — Of these we keep constantly on hand upwards of ONE HUNDRED 
 different patterns, suitable for bfeaking up new ground, meadows, swamps, stubble, 
 corn, cotton, rice and sugar lands. Also, a gi-eat variety of harrows, cultivators, cotton 
 sweeps, rollers, seed sowers, corn planters, gi*ain cradles, hay and straw cutters, com 
 Bhellers, grain mills, shovels, spades, hoes, scythes, rakes, wheels, wagons, carts, wheel- 
 bai'rows, pumps, road scrapers, axes, chains, &c. 
 
 Horse Po'wrers.— The 'Rail way or Endless Chain, Taplin's Circular, and other 
 kinds, suitable for one to eight horses. Threshers, Fan Mills, and Smut Machines. 
 
 Stea.m I'^ngrines, for farm and other purposes.* 
 
 Sug'a.r Mills, Rice and Coffee Hullers, Rice Threshers, and Cotton Gins. 
 
 Tapioca, ITIachines, for grating the Yuca, Mandioca and other farinaceous 
 roots for making sago, tapioca, starchy &c. 
 
 Portable Saiv ITIills, "Wind Mills, Grain Mills, Pumps for Wells, Mines, and 
 Irrigating. 
 
 ReapinsT and MoTFinff Macliines, Horse and hand Hay Rakes. 
 
 Casting's for Plows and all Agricultural Machinei-y. 
 
 Horticultural Tools, embracing all suitable for the kitchen, and flower 
 garden, trimming shrubbery, mowing lawns, &c 
 
 SEEDS FOR THE FIELD AWD GARDEN. 
 
 These are imported directly from Eiu-ope, or grown expressly for us m the United 
 States. They are fresh and of the best oualitice. 
 
 Fertilisers.— Peruvian Guano, Poudiette, Plaster of Paris, Bonp Dust, and Phos- 
 phate of Lime. 
 
 IMPROVED STOCK. 
 
 Durham, Devon, and other cattle ; Cotswold, Leicester, Southdown, Merino and Sax- 
 on Sheep ; Suffolk, liincoln, and Berkshire Swine. 
 
 A Descriptive, Pictorial Cataloisrue of over 100 pages, will he given, 
 on application n-om customers, or sent to them by mail, on enclosing four letter stamps, 
 to pre-pay postage, as required by the present post-office law. 
 
 A. B. ALLEN & Co., 189 and 191 Water st. New York^