328 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



herd which means he will every year have a depreciation in- 

 stead of an appreciation in his herd. He quits raising hogs and 

 one or two hogs a year for his table. He finds that require- 

 ments regarding ice and sanitation are quite different, and more 

 expensive. He is daily selling fertility from the farm. The 

 price for milk which looked so much higher than the price 

 received at the creamery often in the end proves to be less 

 profitable. The difficulty is that it probably took several years 

 before it really dawned on the farmer that the sale of milk was 

 unprofitable. Some of the farmers then go out of the dairy 

 business, others continue to drag on hoping for higher prices. 



It is true that many dairy farmers in New England are not 

 making interest on the investment in equipment, land and cows, 

 and that many are practically getting no income from their own 

 labor. It is also true that the number of cows have been grad- 

 ually decreasing from year to year. This, however, does not 

 necessarily mean that the dairy business is fundamentally 

 wrong or that it is on a permanent decline in New England. 

 It means we are in a period of transition. It means that we 

 have reached the end of a period where it is not longer possible 

 to make a profit selling milk from cows producing between 

 4000-5000 pounds of milk per year; when it is no longer possi- 

 ble to make a profit in the dairy business without paying at- 

 tention to the principles of breeding and feeding, and without 

 making a study of crops and rotation of crops best adapted to 

 the dairy farm. 



There is no question that the price of milk is too low, but 

 an increase in price without making an eflFort to carry on the 

 dairy business according to fundamental principles and business 

 method vv'l' never make the dairy business permanent. We 

 are jv-i at the beginning of a permanent dairy industry for 

 New England. Through the various breeders' associations, 

 hundreds of records of the production of milk and butter fat 

 of pure bred cows are being supervised and established by the 

 Experiment Station as permanent history of individuals and 

 of families of dairy cows. 



The salvation of the dairy industry of New England depends 

 upon the improvement of the dairy cattle. The profit in the 

 dairy business should come not only from the sale of milk or 

 other dairy products, but from the sale of cattle. The demand 



