ers didn't bleed much. That night the calves drank their milk and acted as though they were well.

A member- How old were those calves?

Professor Henry - One was a day old. I say they drank their milk. One wasn't away from the cow, the other was five or six weeks. I will report their exact age when I report.

A member-What do you use for dehorning calves?

Professor Henry-I use the same apparatus that Mr. Haaff does. I don't want to supplement Mr. Haaff particularly, but I want to draw out other testimony. We have had the testimony of Mr. Jones, of Wyoming, that he dehorned a hundred head on his farm, and two hundred for his neighbors, and of Mr. Sandford that he dehorned something like sixty. On the university farm the first we dehorned was a vicious Jersey bull. He never killed a man, but he broke one man's collar bone, and only by mere chance had our men escaped being killed by him. Dr. Woodford came and we put the bull in stanchions. The horns were large and powerful; the bull had worn the horns down until the ends were as thick as that (indicating). I have seen him put a horn, when as blunt as that through an inch pine board nailed to studding. He is a very powerful bull. The doctor cut off his horns, he did nicely, cut off at the right point; that bull is not tame. He has plunged at my men since then. Once in the pasture one of the men barely escaped him. If he had had a horn he would have struck the man. And once he charged on a man but slipped on a wet floor and missed him. You see, in that case, it hasn't changed the disposition of our bull. He is as vicious as ever; but I would rather have a bull hit me without horns than with them. He is a six year old bull, and since dehorning him he is a surer getter, if anything, than before, and I believe he is good for four years yet, unless he should become impotent. Now you can afford to buy a good bull if you can keep him for ten years. You see that, and I am very urgent in regard to the bulls.

Then, in regard to other cattle, we had twelve steers, and

I wanted to put six steers in one room and six in another, and I didn't want them tied. In that experiment I wanted them to run loose. And they would fight each other, and hook each other, until we got a saw and sawed their horns off. We had plenty of men to help, to lead them in and fasten them, and men to turn them loose again, and my foreman dehorned six steers in fifteen minutes by the watch. Of course they would thrash and bellow and throw themselves, but we have had stock throw themselves, and bellow and roll their eyes when we were simply getting them on the scales to weigh them. You know how that is.

I believe it hurts. So does it hurt for a person to go to the dentist and sit in a chair and have half a dozen teeth out, and we do that sometimes for our digestion, or even for our looks; and if we can suffer that much pain for ourselves, those cattle that are suffering all the time, can do it.

Mr. Phillips- How did the cattle behave afterwards? Professor Henry - Just like a lot of Merino sheep. I will give anybody in this room five dollars that will go among those steers and pick out the boss or the weakest one. They crowd up to the feeding trough like sheep. The weakest one runs where he pleases, and they will almost walk on one another, and are never in fear of being prodded by the stronger ones. Now the farmers can see this on the farm if they like. I think in the matter of economy in room and feeding, it was worth $50 in that lot of steers to take off their horns. That is, if I were a feeder, working for the market, for dollars and cents, I would not have the horns back for fifty dollars.

Mr. Bender - I would like to ask about those young calves. Did you press your fingers right down to the head?

Professor Henry - Oh, yes; you must find the place.

Mr. Bender - Do you cut it right off at the place where the joint appears to be?

Professor Henry - The horn is a skin growth. It belongs wholly to the skin at first. In later life it attaches itself to the skull. Anybody knows that who has taken a calf and rubbed the horns back and forth, knows that they can be moved at first.

A member-You just cut them off where the hair and skin touches the horn?

Professor Henry - You have got to get the matrix out.

Mr. Haaff-Cut to the matrix, and while they are one to three years old you must cut into the matrix a little. The peculiar thing about it is this: that while you don't in every instance strike the joint below, you still go, so leave enough to heal, but not enough to grow. That comes by experience. No man can tell without trying it. There is this: if you get some stubs you can cut them off again.

Professor Henry - We are experimenting. I am not here to say that dehorning is the best thing yet, but it seems to me the best. I would go on, from my experience, if I were a practical farmer, and dehorn all my cattle. You may be laughing a year or two from now about this, and saying "there was a dehorning craze, and a great blow over this, but it died out." Now I look ahead to all these possible events, and I am hedging against the future; but I say as far as my experience has gone, and from my letters from and conversation with those who have tried it, it is all right. And it is not like advising you to buy this new kind of stock, or that patent remedy. You can do this, and it won't cost you five dollars; so if you do wrong it is not much loss.

Mr. Haaff- How in the world is anybody going to be advised wrongly here? I have letters enough here from men that have been doing it over a year. That can't be mistaken. I have dehorned my cattle for nearly seven years. How can any body be fooled to-day? I don't see.

A member - Does it have a tendency to produce a muley generation?

Mr. Haaff- That is a thing I didn't speak of. You take the calves and operate on them for six generations, and you have got to procure some muleys; I tell you it is so. It is on the principle that like produces like. The rule is this: wherever there is direct arterial circulation nature produces itself every time; but where the circulation is capillary, nature is liable to skip; that is why you get muleys in your

own herd, and don't know how. In the horn from the matrix up, the circulation is capillary. It is just like taking my handkerchief and holding one end of it in a basin of water, and the water is sucked up. For instance, if you chase an animal and get him hot, and dehorn him then, the blood will fly like everything, because you have pumped the blood from the heart up into the matrix. So when you dehorn your brutes you want to have them perfectly quiet, and then they won't average a spoonful of blood to a horn. Mr. Bender - Suppose you cut wrong; is there any danger of bleeding to death?

Mr. Haaff-Yes; they will bleed until they fall. One of my neighbors dehorned a two year old Holstein heifer. He said he wouldn't bother Mr. Haaff; any fool could dehorn an animal. He left two stubs, and they had the greatest kind of a time to get the blood stopped. It is easy to see how it was. If he had taken it off here at the right point, as your doctor will tell you, there is a coating to the artery that collapses and dries up; that is the tendency: but if you cut above, where the secondary circulation is, then the periosteum is just like the handkerchief in the water; it is sucking blood out of the matrix; that is all there is to it. A member If he had known, couldn't he have sawed that horn again, a little lower down?

Mr. Haaff - Yes, sir. When you have an animal with a horn knocked off, and he is suffering, and all that bleeding will stop in a minute by the watch.

Mr. Wilkinson - Is it right at the point of the shell that you dehorn?

Mr. Haaff- That is a good general rule. You can feel the matrix right there. After they are dehorned they won't bother you a bit. In my pasture all my cross fences are two wires.

A member- Now about healing up?

Mr. Haaff-If you get an old animal and don't cut it right you will have a hole there.

Professor Henry - I will say to the farmers that we dehorned some of our steers too long, and the horns are grow

ing, as you will see if you visit the farm. But they are all right.

Mr. Haaff- They are all right for future experiments. Professor Henry - Our steers gained a little over two pounds a day for forty-two days after cutting the horns off.

Convention adjourned.

WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 2, 7:30 P. M.

Mr. Arnold in the chair.

The chairman - This convention, as a rule, is made up in a great majority, of representative farmers. There are no spring chickens; and whatever we may say or do in this convention is looked upon as some indication of the sentiment of the farmers of the state of Wisconsin. Therefore the importance, in adopting or rejecting any resolution, that we do it with deliberation; and for this reason I suggest to you, gentlemen, that you appoint a committee on resolutions, to whom all resolutions shall be referred, before action by this convention.

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Mr. Allen I move you, sir, that there be a committee of three person's appointed.

The motion was unanimously carried.

QUERIES.

BY A. D. Mc GILVRA, BARABOO.

At a time like this when the price of all meat products is at a low water mark, we naturally speculate on the profits of the various kinds, and ask ourselves which, with our facilities, it is best for us to raise. I have devoted some time on the Wisconsin State Census Report of 1885, seeking to use it as an aid in determining the question for myself, and will give you its figures as briefly as possible and then propound my query. We have on hand in Wisconsin, ac