CATTLE: THEIR BREEDS, MANAGEMENT, ETC. CATTLE, THEIR VALUE.-There is not a race of animals to which the community is on the whole more indebted, than to cattle. They not only cultivate the land, but afford food of various kinds, in different circumstances of their existence; and also, at death, supply very important articles of clothing and utility, and are amongst those animals to which we owe by far the most of the comforts and conveniences of life. Not to mention the use of cattle in many districts of country for the purposes of labor; they supply, during life, those most important of necessaries, milk and cream; they afford the luxuries of cheese and of butter; and at their death they are the sources of supply of the food which has become associated with national peculiarities even, and which is one of the most nutritious of the necessaries of life. Nor in death does their utility cease. Their hide provides the protection to our feet and the trappings to our horses-their horns, combs and ornamentstheir hoofs even, and their waste, supply glue and gelatine; while their bones afford the handles for our knives and many useful articles in manufactures; and the refuse again, of these, returns to our soils as a most valuable manure. THE DAIRY BREEDS OF CATTLE.-The great object for which cattle are kept by the farmer is either to grow beef for the market, or to produce milk, which shall be converted into butter or cheese, or sold as milk, to supply the great towns. Hence the former selects the fat-producing, and the latter the milk-producing class of animals. Nature, as a general thing, has provided that different races of animals, and different individuals of these races, are, more than others, adapted to the secretion of one or the other of these necessary products. The objects of the two secretions are essentially different, and the tendencies and qualities necessary for both are never active in the same animal at the same time. For while the former is a reservoir of the carbonaceous matter of the food, laid by for subsequent use in the respiratory system, the latter is the secretion of a substance necessary to support the young progeny until it is able to sustain itself, and to procure from the green pastures the food there provided for it. Hence, to produce milk is, more or less, the natural quality of all kinds and races of cattle; but some will produce large quantities, but thin and poor in quality; some smaller quantities, and rich in oily matter, while others will afford a small quantity, but abundant in solid matter; and the first class would be selected by the milk-man near the populous city, the second by the dairy-man whose product was intended to be butter, and the third by the maker of cheese. There are some tribes of cattle that are both good fatteners and good milkers, but never at the same time. The milk-producing breeds are more widely diffused than any other, because they are capable of being kept to advantage on qualities of herbage which are inadequate profitably to sustain the fat-secreting breeds. Grass-land on the clay soils on the sides of the uplands, and even on the poorer sands, is quite adequate to supply the means of making butter or cheese; but it will very ill repay the person who attempts to feed cattle on herbage so inferior; while the rich alluvial feeding pastures which generally skirt the rivers, are far more profitably employed in raising summer beef than in the production of milk, of cheese, or of butter. Some races of long-horns, of short-horns, or of middle horns, or even of polled animals, are to be placed amongst the one class we have alluded to, and some amongst the other, and we prefer arranging the breeds most celebrated for the quantity or quality of their milk under the first head, and reserve the second to the races with special aptitude for fattening. The question arises very naturally how far it is possible, by external conformations of the individual animal, to detect its capabilities for the secretion of milk. There are instances in every breed where it is evident nature has been more bountiful, or more niggardly, in bestowing the qualities calculated to produce the secretion for which the race may be celebrated; and there are, doubtless, marks, well known to the dairyman, which seldom fail to indicate the power of the animal in the range of qualities peculiar to his race. On the continent of Europe this has been professed to be carried to a very minute extent. François Guénon, a Frenchman, professed to have found, by close observation, a mode of deciding authoritatively, not only the quantity and quality of milk which would be given by any particular cow, but also the period for which she would retain her milk after calving, and this he proposed to do by external appearances alone, and these of a somewhat arbitrary kind. SYSTEM. * It is not within the compass of this work to give any thing like a description of the mode he adopted, now made public, but the foundation of it is, his classification of all kinds of cattle into eight classes, or families; each family is divided into three sections, according to size only, and each section is again subdivided into eight orders. The distinguishing marks by which he divides these are: 1. The Gravure, commencing at the udder, and extending to the bearing; CLASS I. FLANDRINES OF GUENON'S 2. The Epis, a soft brush of hair upon the animal; and 3, Contrepoil, or hair growing the contrary way. The peculiarities of these marks constitute the distinction between the families and orders. Thus, if the gravure be large, the reservoir of milk will be large, and the product abundant; if it be formed of fine hair, if the skin be yellowish, and if a kind of bran powder which comes off the skin be of that color, they are all signs of a good *This work, with the original figures and a full elucidation of the system, can be procured of C. M. Saxton, 25 Park Row, New York. It is an ingenious and plausible system, and well worthy the attention of dairymen.--ED. |