1 68 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



SOME EVERY DAY PROBLEMS OX A DAIRY FAR^I. 

 By F. S. Adams^ Bowdoinham. 



(Stenographic Copy.) 



The subject that I am to speak upon is an important one. 

 I have been coming in contact with these problems every day of 

 my Hfe for some twenty years and I find today that I know less 

 about them than I thought I knew twenty years ago. The most 

 important problem, to my mind, and the one that presents to me 

 the most difficulties, is the problem of breeding. I want to say 

 right here that I think we have made a decided improvement 

 since we first held a Dairy IMeeting at Winthrop. Every speaker 

 at that meeting referred to the cow as a machine ; at this meeting 

 every speaker denies that she is a machine. 



The great problem that confronts the dairy farmers in the 

 State of Maine is how to breed a profitable dairy cow, whether 

 she is Holstein, Jersey or Guernsey. I do not care what breed 

 she is, if she is a profitable dairy cow. How can we get those 

 cows? Many speakers at this Dairy IMeeting say to us, and 

 the agricultural papers say to us, you must have a cow that will 

 produce 300 pounds, or 400 pounds of butter per year. If she 

 does not do that, she is a beggar, she is a boarder, she is a thief. 

 That may be true, but the serious problem is how to get these 

 cows. You cannot go out and buy them. If a man has them 

 he will not sell them. The only way left for us is to raise them 

 ourselves. 



' To my mind there are three conditions that enter into the 

 breeding of a profitable dairy cow. I heard a speaker a few 

 weeks ago say that he could tell the character of a man by his 

 dog, and he could tell the character of the woman in the house 

 by the cat. I will go farther than that and say that you can 

 tell something of the character of a country (I will take in the 

 whole country) by the kind of stock that is kept. Our cattle 

 are afifected by the conditions that surround them, just as we 

 are ourselves. Through the process of evolution we as inhab- 

 itants of this country and of this earth have come up from a 

 savage state. I remember our old geographies spoke of peoole 



