Guernsey Cow, "COUNTESS OF FERNWOOD." Property of L.W. Ledyard, Fernwood Farm, Cazenovia, N.Y.
This is one of the choicest and most reliable of the dairy breeds. They are uniformly red, of fair size, have a sprightly appearance, and reproduce their like more certainly than any other breed that we know. As has been said, they are so prepotent, uniform, and distinct from the other breeds that they may be called a race of cattle. Their history runs back hundreds of years, until it is lost in tradition and uncertainty. But origin and history are of little consequence, since it is the living fact—the cattle themselves—that we have to deal with. The cows give a good sized mess of milk—large milkers have appeared among them as among other breeds—and their milk is very rich. It is not as rich as the Jersey's and the Guernsey's milk, but there is more of it, and it approximates the richness of the milk of these breeds more closely than that of any other. Hence, they are excellent butter cows, and justly favorites among those who are the most familiar with them and know how to breed them. Healthy, hardy, and easy to keep, they are adapted to almost any circumstances, and are excellent as butter or family cows, while the males, owing to their activity and endurance, make splendid oxen—both useful and fine looking. They make fine beef and a fair amount of it. They would be useful animals for crossing on the common stock and grades of the Northwest, where the climate is rigorous and both butter and beef are objects of importance. As workers, they would be very useful there. They will stand as much hardship as any breed we have, and as much as any breed ought to, but will do better under favorable than under unfavorable circumstances. Like all other breeds, they respond readily to kind and generous treatment, it being a universal law that want and abuse are sources of loss in the keeping of stock, the best results always following the best treatment. They will do well on level, hilly or rough pastures, because of their nimbleness and endurance: while the certainty of their breeding makes it perhaps less difficult to perpetuate their good qualities than is the case with any of the other breeds. In short, they are the most prepotent and uniform of all, give a good-sized mess of very rich milk, are easy to keep, hardy and active, and fill a sphere which it would be difficult to fill without them. We do not know how their milk appears under the microscope, but we judge from the characteristics of these animals that the butter globules are above the average size and very uniform. Hence the cream rises readily, is easily churned, and makes a rich-colored, fine-flavored butter. It is a little remarkable that the breeders of these cattle have not succeeded in getting up a "boom;" but the probability is that no strenuous and persistent effort has been made in this direction. Their superior merits are unquestioned and unquestionable.
THE AMERICAN HOLDERNESS.
This is a new breed, and its reputation is mainly of a local character. But it is not without its representatives in most of the Northern and Northwestern States, and its fame has traveled quite extensively, considering the quiet and unpretentious manner in which it was originated and has been bred. In some particulars it is the most uniform of the breeds, even more uniform than the Devon. Especially is this true of the quality of the milk, which is as uniform throughout the herd as if it were drawn from a single cow, the quality varying, where the keep is the same, only with the age of the cow, and the lapse of time since calving. The yield of milk, though not excessive, is large and very rich—almost equal to that of the Jersey and Guernsey, and quite equal to that of the Devon. It churns easily, and the butter completely separates from the buttermilk, rendering a second churning of no avail. Three hundred pounds per cow a year of high-colored and fine-flavored butter is a fair average for a herd. Few, even of selected herds, of other animals equal this. We are not aware of phenomenal milkers among the Holderness cattle, unless all can be called such, their chief characteristic being uniformity. They breed, it may be said, perfectly true to type, so that all are excellent. The reason for this uniformity is plain, and is found in the origin of the breed in the closest possible inbreeding for thirty years. They originated from a cow with calf which was bought by Mr. Truman A. Cole, of Solsville, N.Y., of a drover who had just purchased it at auction in Knoxboro, N.Y., where a herd of pure-bloods, because of the death of the owner, had been sold under the auctioneer's hammer. The cow dropped a bull calf, which was bred to its mother, then to both mother and sister; and this system of close inbreeding, even sire to daughter, as well as brother to sister, has been continued down to the present time, or for thirty years, as before stated. This has fixed and intensified the qualities, and at the same time secured the greatest possible uniformity and really established a breed, separate and distinct from all others. This is the way in which all the valuable breeds have been established, and this is the first persistent and successful effort at establishing a purely American breed that has ever been made. While carefully watching results and selecting for breeding purposes, Mr. Cole has steadily refused to be turned from his course, or to change his purpose of establishing a uniform butter breed, and of testing the fallacy of the popular notion about the injurious effects of inbreeding. His thirty years of the closest inbreeding have shown no such disastrous effects, but, on the contrary, have produced only good ones. There is no failure in form or constitution. The only marked external change, save in securing the greatest uniformity, has been in the gradual change of color. The original animals were pale red and white, the white being along the back from the shoulders to the tail, down the hind-quarters, and along the belly to the shoulders. This distribution of the light and dark colors has remained essentially the same, but the light red gradually turned to dark red, then to brindle and finally to black. The later bred animals are all black and white. But the calves, when first dropped, are still red and white, the red changing to black when the first coat of hair is shed. This is probably one of the most remarkable cases of inbreeding on record, as the breed is also one of the most remarkable. All who have tried this stock are remarkably well pleased with it, and calves readily sell for $100 a head with a demand greater than the supply—and this without any newspaper advertising. The breed is endorsed by Mr. Lewis F. Allen, former editor of the Shorthorn Herd-Book, and author of a work on cattle that stands second to none as authority. This endorsement has appeared in print over Mr. Allen's signature, as have the favorable opinions of many other good judges. In the latest edition of his book on the Cattle of America, he says:
"I never saw a more uniform herd of cows, in their general appearance and excellence, which latter quality they daily prove in the milk they produce. * * Compared with ordinary dairy herds, the uniformity in yield testifies to their purity of breeding and management."
American Holderness Bull, LEWIS F. ALLEN, at 16 months. Property of T.A. Cole, Solsville, N.Y.