THE JERSEY COW--NO PATENT ON THE MACHINE

(George A. Austin, in "Clark County Illustrated" by Saterlee, Tifft & Marsh-1890).

 

The County of Clark, owing to its abundant, nutritious, and diversified grasses, natural and cultivated; its abundance of pure cold water, soft and free from minerals; its healthy climate, and freedom from all diseases of the bovine race, make it preeminently a district for successful dairying. All the elements for success are furnished by nature, and all the dairyman has to do to succeed is to get the best machine and then run it intelligently--the machine that will give the maximum of product for the food consumed; on that has been built (bred) for a specific purpose, one that will take in the products of the farm--the pasture grasses, the hay and grain, and convert it into milk. Rich in solids that will give large yield of butter or cheese, as it is now well known and generally conceded that the butter value of milk is its real value; that milk that will give a large yield of butter will also give an equally large yield of cheese, (a very few extreme cases of abnormal yield of butter excepted). A machine (cow) that gives a very large yield of poor milk is too expensive to run. It costs labor, which is money, to draw the excessive amount of water from the cow. An animal over-large is not desired. The food of support; the fuel to feed the machine is too great for the labor performed. Expenses eat up the product and the balance is on the wrong side.

 

The "general purpose" craze has seized upon breeders, and breeding for beef in all the large breeds of so called dairy cattle--the Short-horns, Ayreshires, Holsteins, and Devons. An attempt to produce a cow whose bull calves should be good beefers, and whose heifers should be great milkers, in quantity without regard to quality, has so far impaired the utility of these machines for dairy purposes that too many blanks are drawn for either purpose--beef or butter. The little Jersey cow, bred for hundreds of years for a specific purpose, but too small for the "general purpose" man, and to high bred for the scrub dairyman, having been handled with a fair degree of intelligence, stands today the QUEEN of the dairy, giving the best returns for food consumed, producing the maximum of quality and quantity at the minimum cost. Her size is such that the food of support is not burdensome, and yet large enough to yield three or four hundred pounds of butter per annum. They are persistent milkers, docile and tractable--'a thing of beauty and a joy in every household." Before the full power of dairy production in this county can be reached, the "general purpose" dairyman must go, and the scrub dairyman, like his scrub stock, be educated up--bred up to the idea that to succeed in any manufacturing enterprise none but the best machines should be employed to do the required work, and then that intelligently handled and put upon the proper or best market in the best possible condition and attractive form. Improved dairymen and improved methods are what is wanted now, and the little Jersey cow, if generally introduced throughout the county, will act as an educator to the farmer to place the standard higher for the dairy product, both in quality and quantity, and rescue the masses from failure and place them upon the enviable plains of success. All honor to the little dairy queen--there is profit to them who appreciate her worth and realize it.