Robert Jennings

“ When we add to these beauty of appearance and hardiness of constitution, it is no wonder that they are held in such universal esteem.
The courage of the cock is emblematic, his gallantry admirable, and his sense of discipline and subordination most exemplary. The hen is deservedly the acknowledged pattern of maternal love. When her passion of philoprogenitiveness is disappointed by the failure or subtraction of her own brood, she will either continue incubating till her natural powers fail, or will violently kidnap the young of other fowls, and insist upon adopting them. ”

“ No feed is complete that does not contain a sufficient amount of nutritive elements; hay, for example, being more nutritive than straw, and grains than roots. The food, too, must possess a bulk sufficient to fill up to a certain degree the organs of digestion of the stomach; and, to receive the full benefit of its food, the animal must be wholly satisfied—since, if the stomach is not sufficiently distended, the food cannot be properly digested, and of course many of the nutritive principles which it contains cannot be perfectly assimilated. ”

“ The hen manifests the desire of incubation in a manner different from that of any other known bird. Nature having been sufficiently tasked in one direction, she becomes feverish, and loses flesh; her comb is livid; her eyes are dull; she bristles her feathers to intimidate an imaginary enemy; and, as if her chickens were already around her, utters the maternal “cluck.”
When the determination to sit becomes fixed—it is not necessary to immediately gratify the first faint inclinations—the nest which she has selected should be well cleaned, and filled with fresh straw. ”

“ The object with many seems to be, to see with how little food they can keep the cow alive. From a correct point of view, the milch cow should be regarded as an instrument of transformation. The question should be—with so much hay, so much grain, so many roots, how can the most milk, or butter, or cheese, be made? The conduct of a manufacturer who owned good machinery, and an abundance of raw material, and had the labor at hand, would be considered very senseless, if he hesitated to supply the material, and keep the machinery at work, at least so long as he could run it with profit. ”

“ A sheep, which has been reared or purchased at the ordinary price, is the only domestic animal which can die without material loss to its owner. The wool and felt will, in most instances, repay its cost, while the carcass of other animals will be worthless, except for manure. The loss of sheep, from occasional disease, will leave the farmer’s pocket in a very different condition from the loss of an equal value in horses or cattle. Humanity, however, alike with interest, dictates the use of such simple remedies, for the removal of suffering and disease, as may be within reach. ”

“ Cows should have, therefore, the most milk-producing food; be treated with constant gentleness; never struck, or spoken harshly to, but coaxed and caressed; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, they will grow up gentle and quiet. The hundredth had better be fatted and sent to the butcher. Harshness is worse than useless. Be the cause of irritation what it may, one thing is certain, that gentle discipline will overcome the most turbulent temper. Nothing does so much to dry a cow up, especially a young cow, as the senseless treatment to which she is too often subjected. ”

“ In instituting a comparison between breeds of sheep for wool-growing purposes, it is undeniable that the question is not, what variety will shear the heaviest or even the most valuable fleece, irrespective of the cost of production. Cost of feed and care, and every other expense, must be deducted, in order to fairly test the profits of an animal. If a large sheep consume twice as much food as a small one, and give but once and a-half as much wool, it is obviously more profitable—other things being equal—to keep two of the smaller sheep. ”

“ The cow has the same points in the main, but her head is finer, longer, and more tapering; neck thinner and lighter, and shoulders more narrow across the chine.
The astonishing precocity of the short horns, their remarkable aptitude to fatten, the perfection of their forms, and the fineness of their bony structure, give them an advantage over most other races when the object of breeding is for the shambles. No animal of any other breed can so rapidly transform the stock of any section around him as the improved short horn bull. ”

“ Keep the cows constantly in good condition, ought, therefore, to be the motto of every dairy farmer, posted up over the barn, and on and over the stalls, and over the milk-room, and repeated to the boys whenever there is danger of forgetting it. It is the great secret of success; and the difference [101] between success and failure turns upon it. Cows in milk require more food in proportion to their size and weight than either oxen or young cattle. ”

“ The excellence of the Merinos consist in the unexampled fineness and felting property of their wool, and in the weight of it yielded by each individual sheep; the closeness of that wool, and the luxuriance of the yolk, which enable them to support extremes of cold and wet quite as well as any other breed; the readiness with which they adapt themselves to every change of climate, retaining, with common care, all their fineness of wool, and thriving under a burning tropical sun, and in the frozen regions of the north; an appetite which renders them apparently satisfied with the coarsest food ”

“ The American farmer should always plan to economize labor, which is the great item of expense upon a farm. By this is not meant that he should strive to shirk or avoid work, but that he should make the least amount of work accomplish the greatest and most profitable results. Labor-saving machinery on the farm is applied, not to reduce the number of hours of labor, or to make the owner a man of leisure—who is, generally, the unhappiest man in the world—but to enable him to accomplish the greatest results in the same time that he would be compelled to obtain smaller ones. ”

“ The value and usefulness of geese are scarcely calculable. The only damage which they do lies in the quantity of food which they consume; the only care they require is to be saved from starvation. All the fears and anxieties requisite to educate the turkey and prepare it for making a proper appearance at the table are with them unnecessary; grass by day, a dry bed at night, and a tolerably attentive mother, are all that is required. Roast goose, fatted to the point of repletion, is almost the only luxury that is not deemed an extravagance in an economical farm-house ”

“ The term "native" is applied to a vast majority of our American cattle, which, though born on the soil, and thus in one sense natives, do not constitute a breed, race, or family, as correctly understood by breeders. They do not possess characteristics peculiar to them all, which they transmit with any certainty to their offspring, either of form, size, color, milking or working properties.
But, though an animal may be made up of a mixture of blood almost to impurity, it does not follow that, for specific purposes, it may not, as an individual animal, be one of the best of the species. ”

“ Breeding, therefore, is a system of counterbalancing—breeding out—in the offspring, the defects of one parent, by the marked excellence of the other parent, in the same points. The highest blood confers on the parent possessing it the greatest power of stamping its own characteristics on its progeny; but, blood being the same, the male sheep possesses this power in a greater degree than the female. We may, therefore, in the beginning, breed from ewes possessing any defects short of cardinal ones, without impropriety, provided we possess the proper ram for that purpose ”

“ Where there is the most fat, there is the best lean; where there is the greatest amount of muscle, without its share of fat, that part is accounted inferior, and is used for a different purpose; in fact, so far from fat's being a disease, it is a condition of muscle, necessary to its utility as food,—a source of luxury to the rich, and of comfort to the poor, furnishing a nourishing and healthy diet for their families. ”

“ All writers on diet agree in describing mutton as the most valuable of the articles of human food. Pork may be more stimulating, beef perhaps more nutritious, when the digestive powers are strong; but, while there is in mutton sufficient nutriment, there is also that degree of consistency and readiness of assimilation which renders it most congenial to the human stomach, most easy of digestion, and most promotive of human health. ”

“ In Scotland it is a rare thing to see a cow milked by any other person than a woman, though men are very commonly employed at it in this country and in England. One never sees a man milking a cow without being impressed with the idea that he is usurping an office which does not become him; and the same thought seems to be conveyed in the terms usually applied to the person connected with cows—a dairy-maid implying one who milks cows, as well as performs the other duties connected with the dairy—a dairy-man meaning one who owns a dairy. ”

“ To insure successful and beneficial crossing of distinct breeds, in order to produce a new and valuable variety, the breeder must have an accurate knowledge of the laws of procreation, and the varied influences of parents upon their offspring. All the breeds in this country are crosses, produced either by accident or design. Crossing does not necessarily produce a breed; but it always produces a variety, and that variety becomes a breed only where there is a sufficiency of stamina to make a distinctive race, and continue a progeny with the uniform or leading characteristics of its progenitors. ”

“ It should be borne in mind, however, that a good race of animals is not always the most beautiful, as that term is generally understood. Beauty in stock has no invariable standard. In the estimation of some, it results mainly from fine forms, small bones, and close, compact frames; while others consider that structure the most perfect, and therefore the most beautiful, which is best adapted to the use for which it is destined. With such, beauty is relative. It is not the same in an animal designed for beef and in one designed for the dairy or for work. ”

“ The Great Java fowl is seldom seen in this country in its purity. They are of a black or dark auburn color, with very large, thick legs, single comb and wattles. They are good layers, and their eggs are very large and well-flavored; their gait is slow and majestic. They are, in fact, amongst the most valuable fowls in the country, and are frequently described as Spanish fowls, than which nothing is more erroneous.
They are as distinctly an original breed as the pure-blooded Great Malay, and possess about the same qualities as to excellence, but fall rather short of them in beauty. ”

“ But there are some—even among intelligent farmers—who make a practice of turning their calves out to pasture at the tender age of two or three weeks—and that, too, when they have sucked the cow up to that time—and allow them nothing in the shape of milk and tender care. This, certainly, is the poorest possible economy, to say nothing of the manifest cruelty of such treatment. The growth of the calf is checked, and the system receives a shock from so sudden a change, from which it cannot soon recover. ”

“ This close life not only loosens the roots of the grass, and disposes them to spread, but by cutting off the short suckers and sproutings—a wise provision of nature—causes the plants to throw out fresh, and more numerous, and stronger ones, and thus is instrumental in improving and increasing the value of the crop. Nothing will more expeditiously and more effectually make a thick, permanent pasture than its being occasionally and closely eaten down by sheep. ”

“ The beast must be a system of mathematical lines. To the advocate of symmetry, the setting-on of a tail will be a condemning fault; indeed the ridge of the back, like a straight line, with the outline of the belly exactly parallel, viewed from the side, and a depth and squareness when viewed from behind,—which remind us of a geometrical cube, rather than a vital economy,—may be said to be the indications of excellence in a fat ox. ”

“ With sheep—as well as with all other animals—much or prolonged exercise in pursuit of food, or otherwise, is unfavorable to taking on fat. Some seem to forget, in their earnest advocacy of the merits of the different breeds, that the general physical laws which control the development of all the animal tissues as well as functions, are uniform. Better organs will, doubtless, make a better appropriation of animal food; and they may be taught, so to speak, to appropriate it in particular directions: in one breed, more especially to the production of fat ”