WHY AND HOW WE KEEP MILK RECORDS. 



By H. O. Danie;ls, Middletown, Conn. 



This morning I attempted to tell you some of our ways of 

 producing feed for the dairy cows by our intensive crop rota- 

 tion system, giving as well as I could, our reasons for adopting 

 the system, and the results obtained. This afternoon, .if you 

 wish, I will try to tell you the kind«of cows to which we are 

 feeding these farm crops and the important place the keeping 

 of milk records has had in securing for us the kind of milk- 

 producing cows we own at Millbrook Farm today. 



First, if you please, we will deal with the question of why? 

 If I were a preacher and seeking for a text to illustrate this 

 question of Avhy, could I find one more applicable than this, "Ye 

 shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." If we 

 keep an accurate, every day account of each cow's production, 

 study the lessons shown by a comparison of these records and 

 the cows that made them and do what we are taught in this 

 truthful work is best for us to do, we shall retain in our herd 

 only such cows as unmistakably are paying us a profit. 



Then I verily believe we dairymen will not be considering 

 ourselves as subjects of slavery, who unwillingly have to milk 

 cows twice a day every day in the year, but free men who have 

 a highly organized machine capable of taking raw products of 

 the farm as we men produce them and transforming them into 

 marketable products that will bring revenue enough, not only 

 to supply us with the necessaries of life but also many of the 

 luxuries and furnish us with that freedom of thought and ac- 

 tivity that makes farming a first class business occupation. 



If you will study these charts with me, we shall find first, wc 

 knozv we can feed our cows more economically. Why? Be- 

 cause we feed every cow according to the work she is doing. If 

 one has a large herd and can not milk all the cows himself, the 

 milk record tells him the quantity of milk each cow is giving 



