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Milch Cows and Dairy Farming: Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management — John Shaqi

Science

Milch Cows and Dairy Farming: Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

Name: Milch Cows and Dairy Farming: Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management
Author: Flint, Charles Louis

Flint, Charles Louis

Cows; Dairying

“It was impossible,” he continues, “that these cattle, fed as they then
were, could be of great weight, well shaped, or yield much milk. Their
only food in winter and spring was oat-straw, and what they could pick
up in the fields, to which they were turned out almost every day, with a
mash of weak corn and chaff daily for a few days after calving; and
their pasture in summer was of the very worst quality, and eaten so bare
that the cattle were half starved, and had the aspect of starvelings. A
wonderful change has since been made in the condition, aspect, and
qualities, of the Ayrshire dairy stock. They are not now the meagre,
unshapely animals they were about forty years ago; but have completely
changed into something as different from what they were then as any two
breeds in the island can be from each other. They are almost double the
size, and yield about four times the quantity of milk that the Ayrshire
cows then yielded. They were not of any specific breed, nor uniformity
of shapes or color; neither was there any fixed standard by which they
could be judged.”

Aiton wrote in 1815, and even then the Ayrshire cattle had been
completely changed from what they were in 1770, and had, to a
considerable extent, at least, settled down into a breed with fixed
characteristics, distinguished especially for an abundant flow and a
rich quality of milk. A large part of the improvement then manifested
was due to better feeding and care, but much, no doubt, to judicious
crossing. Strange as it may seem, considering the modern origin of this
breed, “all that is certainly known is that a century ago there was no
such breed as Cunningham or Ayrshire in Scotland. Did the Ayrshire
cattle arise entirely from a careful selection of the best native breed?
If they did, it is a circumstance unparalleled in the history of
agriculture. The native breed may be ameliorated by careful selection;
its value may be incalculably increased; some good qualities, some of
its best qualities, may be for the first time developed; but yet there
will be some resemblance to the original stock, and the more we examine
the animal the more clearly we can trace out the characteristic points
of the ancestor, although every one of them is improved.”

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

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