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.