IOO THIRTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



Why do you feed protein food to your cow? Why, because the cow 

 must produce the balanced foods, 64 per cent, fat, 3^2 per cent, caseine, 5 

 per cent, milk sugar. The cow cannot help herself; she is producing 

 food for another animal, she is producing it for the food of the calf, 

 she must make the balance food; you ought to have sense enough to 

 feed her the balance ration so she can make the balance food. There 

 is reason and sense in feeding the cow the balanced ration. 



Go a little further. If it is possible we ought to produce that balance 

 food on the farm. By that kind of reasoning I produce alfalfa. Every- 

 body else says: "Hoard, I am afraid you cannot succeed;" but when 

 two miles from me were alfalfa roots in the ground beside of the fences 

 thirty years old I went to work and studied how to grow alfalfa from 

 the Wisconsin standard; had to go through a lot of trouble and mis- 

 takes until I found out what to do and what not to do, then I had 

 splendid success. Alfalfa hay has 11 per cent, protein, bran 12, clover 

 hay 8 per cent, timothy 3 per cent., and I can show you any amount 

 of farmers who believe that timothy hay is first rate hay for cows. 



President Aitken. — Professor Decker needs no introduction to this 

 audience; he will speak for himself. 



Professor Decker. — Ladies and Gentlemen: It was only a few years 

 ago that we received the news of the battle of Manila, and a little later 

 of the battle of Santiago. We could hardly realize the reports that 

 came to us, that we had lost nothing in ships and only one or two 

 lives. And as we began to understand the situation, understand the 

 reason for this, we knew that if we had met with success it was be- 

 cause of the men behind the guns. It is always so in every success; it 

 is because of the men behind the guns. If we are to excel in the butter 

 business we have got to go back to men who are trained in caring for 

 cows properly. Abraham, father of the Jews, was a dairyman, because 

 we read that when some vistiors came to him he set before them a 

 calf and some milk and some butter. Abraham must have been a 

 butter maker. He was in the dairy business early. We also read 

 when David went to visit his brothers that were in the army of Saul 

 fighting the Philistines he carried from his father to his brothers ten 

 small cheese. David's father, Jesse, must have been a cheese maker. If 

 we go into Asia to-day we find dairying is in progress there; that they 

 have milk, butter and cheese, and the butter is probably churned as it 

 was in Abraham's time in a skin that was either hung on a tree or 

 fastened on the back of a horse until the butter was churned, and we 

 are told that it is something to behold. The cheese is of very poor 

 quality. We have been making great progress in other things, in the 

 discovery of the telegraph, in rapid transit and in the great steamships, 

 and we have in dairy matters. It was in 1879 that the separator, cen- 

 trifugal separator, was exhibited at the London dairy show. The com- 

 mittee of awards brought in the report that it was very interesting, but 

 that they doubted if it would ever become practical in large dairies. 

 Since then the centrifugal separator has revolutionized the dairy busi- 



