Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/406

CATTLE. dairy cattle, many giving scarcely enough milk to raise a calf. The Galloways are jet-black and hornless, strongly built and rather low in stature. They are hardy in constitution and much esteemed for beef, but very poor dairy cattle. The Aberdeen-Angus are also hornless and black, and bear a general resemblance to the Galloways, but are longer legged, larger, and looser built. The cows are better milkers. The Devons are an exceedingly symmetrical, beautiful race, originated in North and South Devonshire. They are of a rich red color, and although the bulls and cows are rather small, the oxen grow to great size. The Devon oxen have long been prized as work animals. In regard to the relative merits of the different beef breeds no general conclusion can be safely stated. It is largely a question of individuality and the conditions to be met. There are good and bad examples of the beef type among all the breeds, and it is more important that the animal should approach the beef type in conformation and development, and be so bred as to fatten readily and slaughter to good advantage, than that he should belong to any particular breed. But as between beef breeds and dairy breeds or natives, there is a distinct advantage in favor of the former, which is due mainly to their marked superiority in yielding a large percentage of dressed weight on slaughtering, more advantageous deposition of the fat in the carcass, thicker and better marbled cuts of beef, and to what experts discern as ‘quality.’ The beef animal has been specifically designed for the most favorable production of the best meat, and while there are many cows which combine milk and beef production to a profitable degree, a good carcass of beef from a steer of a pronounced dairy type or breed is rarely seen. The beef type of animals is rectangular in outline, low, broad, deep, smooth, and even—no wedge-shape or sharp protruding spinal column is wanted for the block. According to Curtis, “Broad, well-covered backs and ribs are absolutely necessary to a good carcass of beef, and no other excellences will compensate for the lack of this essential. It is necessary to both breed and feed for thickness in these parts. And mere thickness and substance here is not all. Animals that are soft and patchy, or hard and rolled on the back, are sure to give defective and objectionable carcasses, even though they are thick, and they also cut up with correspondingly greater waste.” A marked and important change has taken place in the profitable type of cattle within comparatively recent years. The present demand is for quality and finish rather than size. The heavy, inordinately fat or rough and patchy bullock has passed away under the demand for early maturity and plump, sappy carcasses of medium weight and minimum offal and waste. The modern type makes beef at decidedly more profit and economy to both the producer and the butcher, and furnishes the consumer a far superior article.

. In no line of improvement of live stock have more remarkable results been attained than in the case of the dairy cow. This improvement has taken place in the earliness of maturity, the length of the milking period, the quantity and richness of the milk produced, and the general economy of production. In the modern dairy cow the tendency to lay on flesh, so highly developed in beef animals, has been largely eliminated, and in its place the ability to convert economically the food eaten into milk has been cultivated in a high degree. Continued breeding to a special purpose has changed the former short milking period, limited almost to the pasture season, to a comparatively even flow of milk during ten or eleven months of every year. A cow that does not average six or seven quarts of milk a day for 300 days in the year, aggregating 4000 pounds, is not considered very profitable. There are many herds having an average yearly production of 5000 pounds per cow, and single animals are numerous which give ten or twelve times their own weight in milk during a year. Quality has been so improved that the milk of many a cow will make as much butter in a week as did that of three or four average cows of the middle of the last century.

The points observed in judging dairy cows are shown in the accompanying illustration, taken from a publication of the United States Department of Agriculture.



Different scales of points have been adopted by the various breeders' associations.

The breeds of dairy cattle most common in the United States and England at the present time are Ayrshire, Holstein, Guernsey, Jersey, Red Poll, and Shorthorns. The Ayrshires, named for the county of that name in the southwest of Scotland, are medium-sized cows, short-legged, fine-boned, and very active. The general form is the wedge shape, regarded as typical of cows of dairy excellence, and good specimens are thin when in milk. The prevailing color is red and white, in spots variously proportioned, but not mixed. The cows are large and persistent milkers, but the milk is not particularly rich, and the fat-globules are small, which causes the cream to rise slowly. An average yield of 5500 pounds of milk a year per cow for a working herd is often realized. One noted herd has an average for nineteen years of over 6400 pounds per cow, and individuals produce 10,000 and even 12,000 pounds a year. Butter records are not numerous, but herds average 300 to 400 pounds a year, and there are individual records of as high as 600 pounds.

The Jersey and Guernsey breeds were both originated in the Channel Islands, but in the