BEST DAIRY BREEDS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1716, 18 January 1905, Page 63

BEST DAIRY BREEDS

The question of which is the best breed of cattle for dairy purposes is a debatable one. Practical results prove that there are good and bad yielders in various pure breeds. At many shows crossbred cows win the' butter test prizes. This makes the problem of how to breed a herd of prime dairy animals the more difficult to solve. Whichever breed may be decided on as best by the individual dairyman one* thing must be kept in view. Never keep a cow that does not give payable results at the pail. Breeding and a stylish appearance without deep milking qualities have little value to the man who has to make his living from the sale of milk or cream. A purebred pedigreed and showy animal is most desirable, but breeding for profits from production is greatly a matter of selection. The purer the animals bred from the more prepotent they are likely to be. Thus the necessity of selecting only sires and dams of pronounced milking strains becomes apparent. At the recent St. Louis Exposition there were 74 cows tested. The trial covered a period of 120 days, and of the breeds competing 29 were Shorthorns, 25 Jerseys, 15 Holsteins, and five Brown Swiss. The Holstein cow Shady brook Gerben, with a yield of 8101.71 b of milk, which contained 282.601 b butter fat, and returned 830.361 b butter, received the coveted award. The second prize went to a Jersey cow, Loretta D. Her yield of milk was 5802.71 b. The amount of butter fat contained was 280.161 b, which produced 330.071 b of butter, or about one-third of a pound less than the winner. The quality of the Jersey is thus shown, as though the Holstein cow gave 22991 b more milk, the yield of butter was almost the same in each case. The question of feed consumed must also' be considered when looking at this result from a practical point of view. It is difficult, in fact, impossible, to say definitely from tests of this kind which breed of stock will be best for individual dairy farmers’ requirements. So much depends on climate, pasture, etc., that each one must intelligently study prevailing conditions and various points of the differet breeds before definitely deciding what lines to breed on. Of the fifteen cows placed in the St. Louis test, the first, seventh, twelfth and. fifteenth were Holsteins, the remainder- being Jerseys.—“ Moira” in “Sydney Mail/*