INSTITUTE PAPERS. 



DAIRYING. 



By Jos. L. Hills, Director Vermont Experiment Station. 



I am asked to discuss dairying before you today. It is a 

 large subject to be handled in the short time which can be devoted 

 to it this afternoon. But few things can be said, and these have 

 been better said by better men than I to Maine dairymen for lo ! 

 these many years. Since farming today is essentially a manu- 

 facturing vocation, let us view it from the standpoint of the 

 manufacturer. Let us consider the machine (the cow), the 

 force she uses (food), the machine-made product (milk), and 

 the "man behind the cow." 



I. THE MACHINE THE COW. 



It may be an inhuman or one-sided way of looking at the 

 matter to think of the cow as a machine ; yet there is a pretty 

 close analogy, if you will only draw it, between the locomotive 

 and the cow. They are both machines, the one living and the 

 other inanimate, but the results are much the same, production 

 of work as a result of the expenditure of energy. A poorly 

 constructed mechanism, or one ill fitted to its purpose, is run at 

 a disadvantage and perhaps at a financial loss, whether it be a 

 loom or a cow. 



The sage of Chase's Mills said this afternoon that he thought 

 there were more cows in the town of Turner than in any other 

 town in the State. I fear that the dairymen of this and every 

 other town in this and every other state have too many cows — 

 of the wrong kind, poorly constructed machines, mechanisms 

 ill fitted for dairy work. Undoubtedly you ought to have as 

 many cows as you have today, or more ; but a good many of the 

 individuals you milk today ought to be discarded and other and 

 better ones put in their places. 



