158 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



$300 per month — a very comfortable margin. It seems to me that 

 the profit in keeping cows is to be secured by looking to these 

 little things, and so increasing the profit. It is only when the 

 yield is above a certain amount that there is any profit at all. I 

 doubt not that there are thousands of cows in the State that don't 

 pay their keeping. The expense of keeping a cow poorly, is 

 pretty nearly as large as the expense of keeping one well, and the 

 profit is a good deal less. Another point is, warmth of building. 

 I think I can bring facts to show that by having a building prop- 

 erly warmed at least 10 per cent, in the cost of keeping is saved, 

 and I am inclined to think the saving would be as high as 16 per 

 cent. Now, if a margin can be saved in both ways we have a con- 

 siderable chance for an increased profit. 



President Allen. I received the day before I came here some 

 statistical tables from the Department of Agriculture, which pre- 

 sented very clearly the comparative products of the different 

 States, not by figures but by lines. I had just an opportunity to 

 glance at them, and I looked to see the place which Maine held in 

 the yield of milk. I found it not at the head where I wanted to, 

 but below the middle. I am quite sure that why we don't produce 

 more is because we don't have the right breed of cows, or don't 

 take sufficiently good care of the cows we have. I am quite sure 

 that if we did what we could do, taking the State as a whole, it 

 would give us a high instead of a low place in that column. 



Mr. Farrington of Orono. I am very sure that many of our 

 farmers are keeping cows and getting returns from them too much 

 at random, and the question recurs to the individual farmer — How 

 shall I be sure as to the amount of profit my cows are paying 

 me — how inform myself whether my cows are being kept at a 

 profit or a loss ? I have made some experiments in that direction 

 with a view of ascertaining what are the returns from our cows, 

 and I will state how they have been conducted. We provide our- 

 selves first with a piece of paper on which each cow's name is 

 written one above another. Close by that is a spring scale, on 

 which as we milk each cow we set the pail and put the weight of 

 the milk against the cow's name. At the end of the week that 

 paper is put by, and the results entered on a book. By that pro- 

 cess, at the end of the year we know when each cow commenced 

 to give milk ; how much she gave at each milking ; at what point 

 the flow of milk began to fall off; how much it fell off, and at 

 what time she ceased to give milk. By means of a per cent, tube, 



