Table D.

On an annual cost of keeping of fifty dollars, and price of butter at thirty-five cents:

Paying$30 00for a200pound cow,he will getin ten years,$95 76
”125 00”300”””318 39
”250 00”400”””507 46
”350 00”500”””744 20
”450 00”600”””960 90

Assuming that each cow, costing at two years old the price named in the tables, will die at twelve years old, the actual value of cows to practical farmers, making annually the different amounts of butter named, is shown.

They show what the cow will make in the ten years, and also what a farmer can afford to pay for each cow making the different amounts of butter named. They show the different amounts the farmer, who buys one of each of the cows named, paying the prices named for each of the five, will make on each, provided no interest is reckoned on the price paid for the cow, or on the butter made from her, during ten years.

These figures are certainly startling to any one who has not taken the trouble to examine this subject, much more so to the farmer who never figures carefully, and does exactly as his father did before him, without regard to the altered circumstances that surround him.

The farmer who shakes his head wisely at his more enterprising neighbor, and insists that cows making as much butter as is mentioned in these five tables do not live and never did, should know that the thorough-bred Jersey cows, Jersey Belle of Scituate, of the Victor family, made 705 pounds of butter in twelve consecutive months; that Eurotas, of the Alphia family, made 778 pounds of butter between November 12, 1879, and October 15, 1880, and dropped a heifer calf on November 4, 1880; that Pansy, sired by Living Storm, dam Dolly 2d, sired by Emperor 2d, made in her four year old form 574 pounds of butter in one year; that imported Flora made 511 pounds of butter in fifty weeks; that Countess made 16 pounds of butter on grass only, when fourteen years old. These well-established facts no intelligent, fair-minded man now disputes, and it is confidently believed that many more Jerseys will make as much butter as have any of those mentioned.

The question which at once suggests itself to farmers who are not satisfied with their present animals, is that of capital. The answer is, “admitting the above figures to be correct, I have no capital to pay the high prices demanded for the best Jersey cows, and I must therefore forego that improvement of my herd, which I know I ought to make.” Let us see if this is so.

By any process of reasoning, the “bull is half the herd.” Each cow contributes to one calf each year half its qualities. The bull contributes to every calf produced in the herd half its qualities. Some horse-breeders will talk only of the excellences of the stallion. Some farmers will talk only of the excellences of the cows. Both are mistaken. The sire and the dam, each contribute to their offspring, on the average, exactly the same proportion of their excellences or defects.

Some bulls are so powerfully organized as to be able to stamp their qualities, good or bad, on nearly every one of their progeny, as are some cows; but these are the rare exceptions. Each contribute the same, as a rule. No scientific investigator of the breeding problem, or careful breeder, would any sooner select the offspring of a 600 pound butter cow, got by a bull from a 200 pound butter family, than he would a heifer got by a full brother to the 600 pound butter cow from a full sister to the 200 pound butter bull.

Using a bull from a 400 pound butter family, on heifers from a 200 pound butter family, is just as likely to produce heifers that will make from two hundred to four hundred pounds of butter annually, averaging a yield of three hundred pounds; as the using of a bull from a 200 pound butter family on cows of a 400 pound butter family, would be to reduce the yield of some of the heifers to two hundred pounds, and the average to three hundred pounds. The increasing the butter yield of the heifers from a herd of cows one half by using a bull on them from a family or breed that make twice as much, or the reverse, can be relied upon as certainly as any expected result in the most uncertain of all business, namely: that of breeding.

If these statements are correct, what had a farmer better pay for a bull from a 400 pound butter family, to use on his herd of ten 200 pound butter cows, rather than use a bull from a 200 pound butter family?

It may be said that the keeping would cost more, because the higher bred product must be kept better. There is some truth in this, but the better keeping would affect favorably the poorer animals as well, and whatever the extra feed would cost, it would carry the value of the average yield as much above the figures we are making, as the extra feed would cost.

The ten 200 pound butter cows, in ten years would pay a profit of $1,957 30. If the ten cows bred from them, by using the 400 pound butter bull, would make half as much again butter at the same cost, the general product would be increased by one half, and leave the sum to be deducted for keeping the same, for if the two year old 200 pound butter heifer could be raised for $30, so could the better bred one. The profit on each of them, deducting $54 18, cost of cow, will be $484 64—on the ten, $4,846 40, and on the 200 pound butter cows, the profits would be $1,957 30. The advantages reaped by the farmer who has the product for ten years of heifers bred by using the better bull, will be $2,889 10 more than on the 200 pound butter cows.

If he paid for his bull $1,500, and the bull and all his cows died at twelve years old, the farmer would be as well off as he would have been to have used the 200 pound butter bull.

But there is no necessity of paying $1,500 for a 400 pound butter bull. One hundred dollars will buy a Jersey bull, six weeks old, from a 400 pound butter family, and he will be old enough to use in twelve months. The $100 paid for him, at six per cent. compound interest, would amount to $191 61, in eleven years. The profit on ten butter cows making three hundred pounds over the ten cows making two hundred pounds in ten years, being $2,800, by deducting the $191 61 for the bull that produced them, (counting nothing for the 200 pound butter bull, for he is good-for-nothing,) the actual advantage reaped by the farmer with intelligence and enterprise enough to secure the better bull, in the ten years after his heifers come in, is over $2,500 on the butter alone. The animals are counted of no value when twelve years old, as the price got for those living beyond that age would average to pay only for the losses caused by accident to animals before reaching that age. These figures take no account of the skim-milk or buttermilk, for they are nearly the same in either case, and will pay the taxes and for the care of the animals; but there is one very important source of profit that is not reckoned, and that is the extra value of the progeny, which is shown by the following table, to be $17,424 48.

There must be no mistake made in procuring a Jersey bull calf.

Although, as a breed, they are twice to three times as valuable for butter as common cows, yet any farmer who buys or uses a Jersey bull, because he is a Jersey bull, will sorely repent his venture.

Buy a bull only from the very best families of Jerseys. They are cheaper than the gift of an average good one.

The idea that it costs more to keep Jersey cows than common cows, or that Jersey cows will not take on flesh, for beef, as readily as other breeds, is true in one view, and very erroneous in another and more correct one.

What a Jersey eats, beyond a limited amount, increases the quantity and richness of her milk, not her flesh, and the amount of flesh she carries is proportionally less for any extra feed, because it does not make flesh, but increases the butter globules in her milk. Again, any other breed can be readily dried off at any time, and being dry, or giving but little milk, and that of poor quality, they readily take on flesh, but a good Jersey is “dried off” with great difficulty, and herein she greatly excels all other breeds. Hundreds of Jerseys, milking twelve to sixteen quarts at their flush, hold out so evenly, that they will give many more quarts of milk, and of double the richness, in a year, than eighteen to twenty-four quart cows, of other families, that are dry several months of the year.

It is the experience of every breeder of Jerseys that, being dry, they will take on flesh as fast, with a given quantity and quality of feed, as other breeds, not exclusively beef producers.

They are not good for beef, simply because they are good for butter.

From Jersey cows, a farmer in New England can make a pound of butter worth thirty-five cents, with a less quantity of food than they now use to make a pound and one half of beef worth nine cents.

If farmers think there is some error in these statements, they will, like sensible men whose prosperity depends upon the result, sit down and figure out the results for themselves.

Those who talk loudest against them, will hold on to a cow in their herd that has a little Jersey blood in her; and if they put a price on her, it will be from half as much again, to double that of the finer formed cow standing beside her, guiltless of having any Jersey blood in her veins.

If there is an animal to be had any better than the bull any one is now using, it ought to be secured at once. So with cows, but by all means change at once for a better, any bull, however good.

It is not claimed for any of the tables herewith presented, that they show absolutely the value of any cow to any farmer, but only that they are relatively correct. Every man who consults them, must make his own adjustments as to cost and receipts on any cow he owns. It is clear, that adding a very little to the cost of keeping, and deducting a very little from the price of butter, will show that any 200 pound butter cow brings her owner in debt, each year. Again, there are probably hundreds of cows kept for the dairy, that will not make two hundred pounds of butter in one year on the same feed Jersey Belle of Scituate, had when she made seven hundred and five pounds of butter in one year. It may be said that no allowance is made for any accidents to which a cow is liable—to abort, to have a calf die at birth, to injury, &c., and the thought is present that the loss on the poorer animal is not so much, in that case, as on the better; but the better is no more liable to such a case, and the loss is nearly the same proportionally. But it is still true, that the nearer to absolute worthlessness animals are, the less the loss, relatively and absolutely, their owner suffers in their injury. Better remember, however, that “blessed be nothing” is not the ejaculation of the healthful, the enterprising, and the successful, but of desperate disease, incapacity, or idleness.