82 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



COWS, one with a record of 12,000 and the other Q,ooo pounds of 

 milk in a year, but I will admit that those are exceptions. But 

 you can quite easily get $48 or $50 from them. You have 

 twelve head of yearlings and twelve head of two-year-olds. If 

 you are wise you will turn those off before they are three. You 

 can make them worth from $50 to $55 a head for beef. That, 

 along with the dairy products from your cows would mean about 

 $100 per cow, $1,200 against $2,400. But you can care for those 

 twelve cows with a great deal less labor and get rid of a great 

 deal of coarser feed. 



I just hold this out as an aid to the dairy business. I believe 

 that under certain conditions you can do business in this way 

 and do it more profitably, especially if you have not the special 

 dairy man. I am free to confess that our people do not like to 

 take care of stock. They do not like to spend all winter in the 

 barn. They want to be out, some of them in the woods cutting 

 spruce logs, some of them trucking on the road, anything rather 

 than staying in the barn and trying to make a profit out of stock. 

 How we are going to turn them around, I do not know. Some 

 of them are seeing that the fertility of their land is being 

 reduced by this constant drain of selling grain and hay; and I 

 think you will find that, although the selling of potatoes is far 

 better and far easier than the selling of hay and grain, unless 

 you keep stock your crops will be reduced, as is the case in the 

 Middle States, and the quality also will be reduced, so that there 

 will not be as much profit in the business. 



I grant that from a special dairy standpoint, I am preaching 

 a doctrine that is heterodox to a certain extent, but we must be 

 guided somewhat by the conditions that exist. You may say, 

 why don't you advocate a special dairy herd and a special beef 

 herd, because there is certainly more money to be made out of 

 an animal so constructed that it will make beef and put it in 

 just the right place? A man may be able to make pretty good 

 money, under special conditions, from a beef herd, taking no 

 account of the dairy, but when you can get cows that will give 

 from six to eight thousand pounds of milk in a season and at the 

 same time raise a good calf that will make a beef animal worth 

 $50 or $60 at two years old, I believe, in this country where we 

 have comparatively small farms, that is the solution of the rais- 

 ing of home grown beef. 



