DAIRY MEETING. 1 25 



We have tried to make comparisons as to the cost of raising 

 and the cost of buying good cows. I suppose you know as "well 

 as I can tell vou that the cows w^e buv in Brisfhton are not always 

 the best cows, but we buy with as good judgment as we possibly 

 can. To institute a basis of comparison, I took the cows that we 

 bought in Seperiiber, 1901. In two successive weeks we bought 

 22 cows, Jersey grades of as good quality as we could buy, and 

 promising cows. They were presumably fresh in August. 

 Thirty- four of our own heifer calves came fresh in that vear, and 

 they averaged to be fresh in the same month, August. We 

 weigh the milk from all our cows, and know just exactly what 

 every cow gives from the time she comes in until she goes to the 

 butcher. Of these 22 cows, inside of four months we found 

 that four would not pay us to keep, and we sold them. That 

 brought the cost of the remaining 18 up to sixty-one dollars and 

 some odd cents for each cow. As I have said, our heifers cost 

 us less than $40 to raise. Of those heifers that came fresh in 

 1901 ^ve have today 32. We killed two as not worth keeping, 

 and it is a question whether it would not be better to kill two 

 more. This would cull the 34 down to 30. The 22 cows which 

 we bought we have culled down to 12, for various reasons. 

 For the year 1902 those 32 heifers, averaging to have come fresh 

 in August, 1 90 1, gave us an average of just a fraction over 6,000 

 pounds of milk each. That was with the first and second calves, 

 because most of them came fresh again during the year 1902. 

 This includes all those that went wrong in any way. We had 

 some cases of abortion, which reduced the average. The cows 

 averaged 5,691 pounds during the year 1902. They are past 

 their prime, presumably at least, and the heifers are coming to 

 theirs. The heifers without culling gave 139 pounds of milk 

 more than the cows that had been culled, in the year 1902. That 

 is pretty good proof that we cannot afford to buy our cows, we 

 must raise them. I do not mean to intimate that everybody in 

 Massachusetts is going to raise his own cows, and you cannot 

 sell Maine cows there. But if on a leased farm, for which we 

 pay a pretty fair price, we can raise heifers as good as those 

 for $40 each, it will not pay us to buy our cows. The ordinary 

 milkman about Boston will pay for any cow that will be guar- 

 anteed to do for him what those did for us at least fifty per cent, 

 more than it would cost to raise his cows. 



