I08 AGRICULTURE Of MAINE- 



Now we will turn for a few moments to the question of how 

 we keep records. We have a spring balance milk scale with the 

 pounds and fractions of pounds marked in tenths and so ad- 

 justed as to just balance with the weight of pail on hook. Then 

 any weight of milk in pail will immediately register on this cir- 

 cular dial and all one has to do is to take the small fraction of 

 time needed to mark up on the record. We have a record sheet 

 divided into periods of lo days, so as to make easy computation 

 and as these three periods of each month are added together the 

 sum total of each cow's milk is added to what she has produced 

 previous to this, since her last freshening, and by continuing this 

 record from the first of a given year to the first of the next year 

 we can tell just how much milk each cow has produced every 

 month, or day or year w'e keep her. We begin our records all 

 on the first day of January of each year and close on the last 

 day of December of that year, regardless of wdien the cow fresh- 

 ened, and then transfer them off the daily sheet on to a herd rec- 

 ord book which is complete and large enough to keep the records 

 of 50 cows or more for five years. 



The record sheet also tells, or has spaces to be filled in, when 

 the cow calved, when bred and when due and also per cent, of 

 butter fat, and there is also a space for a number and name for 

 each cow, as I believe one can more readily become acquainted 

 with the individual cow if she has a name distinctly her own. 



At the end of the year we add up the total amount of milk 

 produced for all the year and compare these amounts with each 

 other, and we find some useful lessons by this comparison. We 

 find the total amount of milk produced by the whole herd. We 

 have columns on each monthly record stating how many cows 

 were milking, how many cows were kept as a whole herd, how 

 many bought or raised or sold and how many cows were kept 

 on an average each month, and what the average production per 

 cow is for the full year. To make the study still more instruc- 

 tive and interesting we recently compared the yearly output and 

 average of our herd for the past seven years and found some 

 striking results. 



We found our average record per cow for the first tour yeat-s 

 did not materially increase, while in the last three years our rec- 

 ords have increased at the rate of 300 to 400 lbs. of milk per 

 cow each year, until we have raised the average of the herd of 



