On an annual cost of keeping of fifty dollars, and price of butter at thirty-five cents:
| Paying | $30 00 | for a | 200 | pound cow, | he will get | in 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.