DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 253 



this year we had received several applications from some of 

 the very men who joined when the association first started and 

 after a year or two dropped out. Now they wish to be taken 

 back at the first opportunity, and I predict that in the near 

 future it will be necessary to have two associations to cover the 

 ground that is now being covered by one. This will be much 

 better all around, not only as regards the tester but on account 

 of the members getting out to the meetings, etc. 



One reason of our greater prosperity we consider to be the 

 marked improvement in the herds of the various men who have 

 belonged to the association from the first. This has told its 

 own story and has done more to influence the dairymen in our 

 section in favor of cow test work than any amount of talking 

 could ever do. I know of one man who is not a member, in 

 our town, who says that the association has been a benefit to 

 him, although he has never had a cow tested. 



The greatest help, possibly, of the cow testing work, is eii- 

 abling us to tell our good cows from our poor ones, so that 

 we can get rid of the poor ones and keep the best. We can 

 guess which our best ones are, but we cannot always guess 

 right. One of our members found at the close of a year's 

 work that the cow which he had considered his poorest one 

 was in reality making the greatest profit; while his best one, 

 as he thought, because she produced a large quantity of milk, 

 was making the least profit. It is not the amount of milk a cow 

 gives, unless we are selling milk, that we should look at, but 

 the profit she makes. 



Another important item in our work is knowing the cost of 

 feed and the amount returned by the cow above what is ex- 

 pended on her feed. If a cow produces a large amount of 

 butter fat and we have to give it all back to her in her feed, 

 what are we making out of the transaction? 



No small advantage of this work is the meetings where ws. 

 get together, compare notes, talk over the dairy business and 

 listen to a good speaker from the Department. 



One of the greatest helps in this work, to my mind, perhaps 

 because I am particularly interested in that, is the assistance 

 it gives us in the breeding of our dairy animals. It is the only 

 way to breed intelligently, with any degree of certainty as to 

 what the result will be, for "As the twig is bent so the tree in- 



