60 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Two of them, the Jerseys and the Guernseys, have been bred 

 for centuries for economic butter production ; and the Ayrshire 

 and the Holstein have been bred for a large milk flow. This 

 selection and breeding has resulted in various breed character- 

 istics one of which is a difference in composition and in the pro- 

 portion of fat to solids not fat in the milk. In the St. Louis 

 dairy test the milk of the Jersey herd contained 1.87 pound of 

 solids not fat to each pound of fat, the milk of the Holstein 

 herd contained 2.3 pounds of solids not fat to each pound of fat. 

 Now what do these figures mean? The Jersey and Guernsey 

 cows have a certain advantage because of the character of their 

 milk for economical production of butter fat. The Holstein 

 and Ayrshire have a certain handicap because for each pound of 

 fat produced more solids not fat are elaborated in the milk. 

 That is a particular characteristic of the breeds, and it seems 

 to me that the Jersey and the Guernsey have a certain advantage 

 in the line of economic production of butter and butter fat. I 

 am not a breed fancier. In another place, I would say just as 

 much for the Ayrshire and Holstein. I think they can produce 

 milk solids more economically and in certain ways are better 

 fitted for the production of market milk. Outside of the breed 

 there are great differences in individual cows, as we all realize. 

 In fact, there are greater differences than between the breeds 

 themselves. That subject has been brought to your attention a 

 great many times, and I do not expect to say anything new upon 

 it. I do not know as I can put it in any different way than it 

 it has been put to you a great many times, but here is one of the 

 stumbling blocks in the management of the dairy business of 

 today. We keep too many cows. We do not know what they 

 do. Some of them are good cows, some of them are poor ones, 

 and it takes the profit of the good cow to balance the loss from 

 the poor ones. Now it is difficult to say what is the real differ- 

 ence in the dairy capacity of cows. It is not so much in the 

 amount of food they eat ; the Irue difference seems to be in the 

 ease or manner in which they convert the digested food into 

 milk products. Take the cows Rose and Nora of the Illinois 

 Experiment Station. They were kept in a barn for the year 

 and the exact record was kept of all food consumed. Rose 

 consumed 6,477 pounds of digestible nutrients and produced 

 658 pounds of butter. Nora consumed 6,189 pounds of nutri- 



