How to Select Cows: or, The Guenon system simplified, explained, and practically appliedHazard, Willis P. (Willis Pope)
Science
How to Select Cows: or, The Guenon system simplified, explained, and practically applied
Hazard, Willis P. (Willis Pope)
Cattle -- Judging; Cows; Dairy cattle
Now, having laid out this programme, he does not say what was to be
done with it. The inference was to be drawn, we suppose, that the many
escutcheons were to be engraved, and the public were to draw their
conclusions from them and the reports given by the owners and milkers,
and see how Guenon would stand the test. And what were the believing or
non-believing commissioners to do? Supervise the taking down of all this?
How, at once, this shows Mr. Hardin to know little or nothing of the
system! Like Mr. Reeder, he did not know that Guenon assigns many other
things to be thought of to form a correct opinion! Was it more proof to
be told by the owner all that any one could know about the cow, and then
say that corresponds with the escutcheon? Or did it put the system to a
severer test, to say to the owner, don’t tell me a word, and then proceed
to tell him all about a cow you never saw, simply from examining her
escutcheon? In one case, you are assisted to define the escutcheon by the
knowledge given you. In the other case, you define the cow’s character by
only the knowledge you can get from the escutcheon. No better proof can
be given of Mr. Hardin’s lack of practical knowledge of the system.
Another objection he makes, and repeats several times, as being a
very strong one with him, is, why did not Guenon, and why do not the
commissioners, go to work and buy up all the best cows and sell them at
a profit, and thus get very rich. His cry is, why don’t they make plenty
of money out of it, if it is so valuable? Simply, because neither of them
are in that business, or care to be. But Mr. Harvey, a manager of the
Delaware county almshouse, in one year from taking this position, changed
the cows there, and increased the yield twofold from the same number of
cows, and has bought and sold all the steers and cows on his large farm
for many years solely by this system, and _has_ grown wealthy.
He says in another article “feeling the modesty that naturally attaches
itself to benighted ignorance,” he “started out in the city in search of
some one who was learned on these subjects.” He found “a professor in
our medical institute,” “one of our most learned physicians,” and they
proceed together to canvass Professors Magne and Arnold’s theories and
facts about the formation of the escutcheon. The result of two such wise
heads (or of “benighted ignorance”) coming together, was that neither
of them ever heard of Professor Magne, and that his dictum was “opposed
to all the teachings of physiology.” The learned professor knowing as
much about a cow as he did of physiology. And it is such stuff as this
which forms the arguments of Mr. Hardin. Professor Salmon in his essay on
Contested Dairy Questions effectually settles these “learned” men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account