DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 38c) 



A third advantage that may accrue to a member of a cow test 

 association is the coming together of its members in regular 

 meetings. Some are held quarterly, some monthly, and in some 

 associations hardly any meetings are held. The W'aterville 

 Dairy Improvement Association has had them every month 

 and with ver}' few exceptions they have been successful. 

 The advantage of these meetings is, first — I do not know 

 whether to say least or greatest — that we talk over these 

 things among ourselves, including the tester, ask questions of 

 each other and if we have learned anything by the way of actual 

 experience that is harmful in practice, — or if we have made 

 a mistake — we tell of it if we are honest and want to benefit the 

 association ; and then, again, we learn the best feeding methods 

 and the best records of herds and cows in our association, thus 

 giving us an impetus and an inspiration as well as the real 

 knowledge. I think the best part of it, however, is the fact that 

 almost always we have speakers furnished by the Agricultural 

 Department or by the extension course of our State College, 

 whose lectures, many of them, would be worth going miles to 

 hear. There are some speakers from the College who have been 

 frequent visitors to our association. Prof. Simmons has come 

 again and again. Prof. Corbett has been with us once and I 

 presume he will be with us again. We have had such men as 

 Mr. Deering, Mr. Adams, Mr. Mclntire and Mr. Pope of 

 Manchester, all those good men who have been doing things and 

 telling us how to do things. A young fellow from the firm of 

 Waterman & Sons came to our last meeting. He is a son, and 

 I believe he has had a little experience at the College. At any 

 rate, he has had experience at home and he told us how he 

 did things and our people asked him questions. He told us 

 just the things our people asked for, and so we learned some- 

 thing even from such a young man as he. Dean Merrill has 

 been with us two or three times since our organization. 



We have had members of our association who did not know 

 anything about dairying when they joined, and they have made 

 good progress. One young man I noticed secured a score of 95 

 on his print butter exhibited here, and another young man got 

 the prize at 97J. That is what our dairymen are doing because 

 of the work of the cow test associations and because of the work 

 of the State College. One man, a neighbor of mine, was not .1 



