as of those of Pennsylvania Germans. It is true that Dwight, speaking for the older New England, suggests that the barn was apt to be a much better structure than the house. The custom, however, noted by travelers in New York and elsewhere, of letting cattle run at large all winter without shelter other than trees and brush, and perhaps the straw pile or rick of marsh hay, argues that stabling was furnished for only a minimum number of work oxen, horses—if such there were—and perhaps in some cases cows in milk. It undoubtedly was not the practice to house stock cattle, or even—except in isolated cases—to feed them in sheds. The advocates of careful sheltering who wrote for the agricultural journals recognized that the weight of opinion was against sheltering stock. They compromised with that opinion by recommending sheds for young stock and dry cows, and warm barns only for milking cows and work animals.[1] Yet, some of the leading cattle feeders of the Genesee valley, as late as the year 1842, were content to scatter loads of hay over meadows and through brush patches for the hundreds of beef cattle they were wintering.[2]
The livestock, except sheep and pigs, was still by 1840 prevailingly of no breed. Nevertheless, Durhams and Devons were coming into use. The Patroon stock of shorthorns, introduced in 1824 from England by Stephen Van Rensellaer, of Albany, gained its first customers apparently among the English farmers of western New York, but gradually made its way among the Yankees as well. Other importations were soon made, so that by 1840 there were several prominent herds of purebreds in that section of the state. In 1842 it was said of the Genesee County Fair that "with the exception of some working oxen and one cow not a single animal of native cattle was in the yard. All were either pure or grade Durhams or Devons....
