The Evolution of Dairying. 437 



special lines for special purposes. We are coming l>y common 

 consent to believe that the most profitable dairy cow is one built 

 with a certain physical conformation and temperament, and that 

 this same conformation is not consistent with the most economi- 

 cal production of beef. 



It is told of Booth, the great Short Horn breeder, that he used 

 to walk down behind those magnificent mountains of flesh where 

 every calf stood between two cows, and striking his hand upon 

 their padded rumps would say, " What does a few quarts of 

 milk from a cow amount to?" And to-day the intelligent dairy- 

 man asks, " What does a hundred or two pounds more or less 

 of inferior beef amount to? " 



So much for the evolution of the cow considered as a machine. 

 Since the Spanish-American war we have been very fond of 

 speaking of " the man behind the gun," and so 1 want to speak 

 of the force behind the cow. Two things must interest every 

 dairyman and they are what he takes out of the cow, and what 

 he puts into her. And after all, I sometimes think the greatest 

 and primary question connected with dairying is feeding the cow. 

 And certainly changes here are evident enough. The old 

 regime and directions for feeding the cow were simple and com- 

 prehensive. It was grass and warm water in summer, and hay 

 and ice water in winter. If the pastures were abundant, so much 

 the better. If the drouth came and they were scanty, it was 

 no use to murmur — the ways of Providence are inscrutable and 

 past finding out. We are moving toward a time when pastures 

 shall be the main dependence for only six weeks of the year; 

 when quick growing forage crops shall carry us till the wonderful 

 maize is mature and when with early cut hay and ensilage, and 

 nitrogenous by-products, the cow will scarcely care whether it 

 is June or January. The greatest invention which has come to 

 the dairyman within a generation is not the separator, it is not 

 the Babcock test, it is not the feeding standard, but it is the 

 silo. And this newly-developed science of storing green forage 

 has worked almost a revolution in the practice of the winter 

 feeding of the cow. And not this; that while the silo has 

 been a great help to the man who has availed himself of it, 

 it has (because of the cheaper production it has made possible) 

 been a stumbling block in the path of the man who has refused 

 to avail himself of it. 



There has been the evolution of the cow herself; there has 

 been the evolution in our ways of feeding the cow, and let us 



