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Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886
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222 STARTING A H E R D , The present time of depression in prices for pure-bred cattle is believed to afford an unusually good opportunity for farmers to engage in breeding such of the breed of their choice. It is quite generally recognized that it is good economy to make use of a pure-bred bull. The purchase of even one or two females will enable one—with ordinary good fortune—to secure a fair-sized herd in a comparatively few years. Such a purchase may result in loss. The cows may die, fail to breed, or produce only bull calves. Two cases of reasonable success are noted from the University herd of Short-horns. We have recently sold, for beef, a Short-horn cow thirteen years old. She had failed to produce a calf in two different years; one calf died soon after birth; only three of her calves were females. Of these the first was sold as a heifer, and the third was killed by an accident when a young cow. Notwithstanding all this, we have sold her descendants for $1,350, in no case receiving more than $125, and have eleven on the farms, certainly, even at present low prices, worth $1,100. Another cow gave us her first heifer calf in the spring of 1881. We now have eight female descendants, six of them in calf—as is the old cow—and four young bulls. Of young bulls descended from her, sales have been made to an amount which nearly or quite repays the cost of keeping all during these years. While these cases are not to be classed as ordinary ones, they are not especially remarkable. They are given as offering some encouragement to young farmers hesitating whether it may be safe to invest in the foundation for a herd of pure-bred cows. Of course the rapidity of increase with sheep, and especially with hogs, is much greater—so great that there seems little reason why almost any farmer may not have a stock of pure-bred animals of these classes.
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