142 AGRICULTURE 'OF MAINK- 



could reach down and grasp within a very small fraction of a 

 pound of the amount we wanted. So you can get it approxi- 

 mately in that way. The herdsman having his milk record and 

 his feeding record is able to watch the two together, and that 

 means considerable. For instance, if he starts the cow on the 

 grain ration of a dry cow, perhaps six pounds, and then gives 

 her ration No. 2 of 8 pounds, and she goes up to 26 pounds of 

 milk on the No. 2 ration, he knows immediately when she has 

 come to her maximum production on that amount of feed. 

 Then he increases it one pound and watches the milk record. 

 He knows what it has cost to give the cow the extra pound of 

 grain, — we will say i^A cents, and he knows when that cow has 

 increased her milk production i^ cents' worth. Perhaps she 

 goes up three cents' worth or five cents' worth, and then it is a 

 good investment to give the extra pound of feed. Or perhaps 

 he is beginning to give her a different ration, — he increases the 

 food nutrients slightly but does not increase the cost very much. 

 He allows her to go to her maximum on that. Then if on 

 looking at her milk record the last half pound of grain gives 

 only an increased production equal to the actual cost of the 

 grain, there is nothing to be gained in that way, unless he is a 

 milkman and needs the extra product for his customers. By 

 watching the milk record and the grain ration, in this way, he 

 is able to strike the point of economical production. And not 

 only in bringing the cow to the point of economical milk pro- 

 duction is it worth the time, but it does far more than that. 

 It shows you exactly how your cows are standing. 



There is another thing in relation to those records : We go 

 along and look them over and we find that every cow is doing 

 about the same as yesterday, until we come to a cow that is 

 three pounds short of what she did yesterday. The chances 

 are that the milker did not notice that until he hung the pail on 

 the scales. I find that they notice it very quickly then and are 

 apt to let me know, but if it was not for the records they would 

 probably never say anything about it even if they did notice it, 

 which is very unlikely. On seeing that the cow has dropped 

 down three pounds we endeavor to determine the cause. There 

 may be various causes. The first thing that we naturally do is 

 to see whether the cow was milked carefully or not. Once in 

 a while we catch a man slighting the milking, but they are 

 usually pretty keen on that as they know that we can tell from 



