DAIRY MEETING. 1 55 



land, and the average income is $878. The demands are such 

 that we must increase this income. This farm will keep about 

 four cows and two horses for work and pleasure. Those four 

 cows, cost about fifty dollars a year and they average 200 pounds 

 of butter each, or a total of 800 pounds. Let us suppose it sells 

 at twenty-five cents and that the income is therefore $200. We 

 are not any more than meeting expenses, and right here many 

 men have said dairying does not pay, and have tried 'swapping 

 horses or something else that did not require effort on their part. 

 But we have decided if otherscan and do make money it is our 

 own fault if we do not. We do not want it said we are not as 

 smart as our neighbor or acquaintance who has a fine herd that 

 pay him a handsome profit. We must find the remedy. 



If we are to make any success of life, we must have high 

 ideals and some definite object in view. 



The object of a dairy may be three-fold, — the production of 

 milk for wholesale dealers, mainly confined to the farms on the 

 line of some railroad and to those farms in the vicinity of large 

 towns where a mixed husbandry is followed, the production 

 of butter, chiefly confined to farms at a distance from the towns 

 and cities, and the manufacture of cheese carried on to some 

 extent under conditions similar to butter production. 



These different objects should therefore be kept in view in 

 selecting cows for dairy purposes. Animals which would be 

 profitable in a butter dairy might prove a poor investment for 

 milk or vice versa — a fact which should be more carefully con- 

 sidered. 



The productiveness of a cow does not depend so much upon 

 breed as it does upon her food management, her temperament 

 and health and the activity and energy of the organs of digestion 

 and secretion. These organs, it is true, are far better developed 

 and more permanently fixed in some breedsthan in others, and 

 in selecting a herd one cannot be too particular to get cows of 

 good dairy type and large capacity. Milk, like all other animal 

 products, is derived from food. Its secretion stands almost 

 unrivaled as an example of the rapid, extensive and continuous 

 transformation of food into animal compounds. The secretion 

 of milk is carried on in the udder or mammary gland, and is 

 directly affected by the health of the animal, its food, or any con- 

 dition which affects the nervous temperament. 



