THE CARE AXD MANAGEMENT OF THE DAIRY HERD. 43 



in the dairy. It is true that when you and I go out to buy cows 

 we cannot take a Babcock test and a scale under one arm and a 

 tubercuHn syringe under the other. We must be governed by 

 our eyes. For the initial purchase this method is all right but 

 as soon as these eye servants have been brought into our barns 

 we must weigh and test the milk. This is the supreme, court 

 from which there is no appeal. Performance must support form 

 01 form must give way to performance. It is almost useless for 

 any institute speaker to urge the importance of cow selection 

 but we must keep at it line upon line, precept upon precept, 

 hoping for evolution not for revolution. It is useless to bring 

 up m}" own case where in establishing a herd of sixty-five paying 

 animals, we found it necessary to buy over 140 cows, measuring 

 them with the scales and the crude test and rejecting all those 

 who did not give a sufficient yield of milk to give us a profit on 

 the feed consumed and the time expended in their care. It is 

 perhaps useless to call the attention of this audience to the fact 

 that the prettiest cow we had. a cow purchased of a Mrs. Camp, 

 yielded but about 2250 lbs. milk in the year, although when she 

 was fr^.sh she gave as high as 40 lbs. of milk per day. Her 

 form approximated the standard but her performance was nil. 

 She was fattened and sold to the butcher. While another cow 

 called Slope, a homely old creature, gave us 7000 lbs. milk and 

 this although in many respects she varied widely from the 

 empirical standard. It is useless for us to discuss the well 

 known fact that in the stables of possibly every farmer who 

 does not weigh the milk of each cow. one half of his herd pro- 

 duce all of the profit and he would be better off if the other 

 half were banished from his stables altogether. Select your 

 cows, therefore, not by breed alone, except to take the breed 

 you like the best and stick to it, but make your final selection 

 by the scales and tests. It is a bother, it does take time but it 

 pays. In fact, no dairyman can expect to get much profit from 

 his dairy until he has selected out the cows that do not pay. 



Now with properly selected cows and wisely bought feed we 

 are ready to take up the question of the stable sanitation. 



As our cows approach the stable they must not be required 

 to wade through mire and mud. In their pasture fields they 

 must be excluded from mud holes. The work of Dr. Y. A. 



