Thirty-sixth Annual Convention 973 



whether they keep books or not, they know whether they 

 are making- anything or not, and they would abandon dairy farm- 

 ing if they did not make something out of it. I can conceive that 

 a man as a dairy farmer can make a profit on his farm even 

 though all of his cows do not pay for the feed they consume 

 and that it would be better business for the farmer to 

 market products through the dairy cow if she did not give him 

 a cent of profit on the market value of the feed. It is better to 

 feed the dairy cow at market prices than to grow those crops and 

 haul them away from the farm and sell in the open market at the 

 same price. I make the dairy cow the market for the crops I 

 grow. If she will pay me market prices for those feeds — hay, 

 silage, peas and oats — as much as I can get for them if I haul 

 them away from the farm, is it not better for me as a dairy farmer 

 and business man to sell these feeds to the dairy cow than to haul 

 them off and sell them in the market? No question about it. 

 But it is not necessary for us to feed the crops to cows that 

 only barely pay market prices for them. On an average the dairy 

 cows of this country pay more than the market price for their 

 feed. In Michigan in 1907 we had four cooperative cow testing 

 associations in different parts of the state. These asso- 

 ciations averaged a little over three hundred cows to the asso- 

 ciation, or over twelve hundred cows under test. The cows were 

 charged up with every bit of feed consumed at market prices and 

 given credit for butter fat at market prices — not fancy prices 

 but just average Elgin prices — and on the average those 

 1,200 cows paid the farmers $1.85 for every dollar's worth of 

 feed consumed. It is better for the dairy farmer to feed his crops 

 to the dairy cow and get $1.85 than to ship to Xew York and get 

 $1. A great many cows among those 1,200 did not pay market 

 price, but others paid more. I know you can select herds in New 

 York and I can in Michigan that pay the farmer much more than 

 that for feed, but this is an average. I know, too, that you can 

 probably find herds in New York, and I know we can in Michigan, 

 where they would not pay anywhere near as much as that. I pre- 

 sume these 1,200 cows were owned by men who were above the 

 average of dairymen, or they would not have had enterprise 

 enough to be members of a cooperative cow testing association. 



