976 New York State Dairymen's Association 



is, what will that sire do when he is mated to the cows in our 

 herds. That is the chief question, the utility test. You do not 

 know the value of a sire until he is four or live years old and his 

 daughters freshen, and yet the average dairy farmer breeds to a 

 sire only a year old, and perhaps does not keep him longer because 

 he does not want to take care of an older animal. And so he is 

 breeding to sires of unknown quality all the while. It may be that 

 he is sired by a bull that has had wonderful prepotency, it may be 

 that he is out of a cow that has produced phenomenal records, and 

 yet I say to you that in my observation that calf may not be 

 worthy to head your herd, — and you do not know until you have 

 tried him out. Here is where cooperative breeding counts. 

 Here is where the cow testing association idea comes in to help 

 the average dairy farmer. It is only the farmer with a large 

 enough herd to test the young sire that can make very much 

 advance along this line, working alone. If you have a large herd 

 of cows you can afford to select the sire to replace the one you 

 have to discard, and rear him and only breed him to a few cows 

 at first until those heifers have developed and you know just what 

 effect he is going to have upon your herd. Yet we can work 

 together in a cooperative way, as the farmers of Denmark do, 

 and owTi sires jointly. Then an association can buy a young 

 sire, using good judgment in selecting the one with the best 

 individuality and breeding, and breed him to one or two of each 

 herd only, wait until we see the results, then if ho proves to be 

 valuable we have drawn a prize, and if not we have simply drawn 

 a blank and the only thing to do is to make bologiui sausage of 

 him. It is a slower process, but my friends it is the only safe one. 

 You ought to put the sire to the test, and from the same practical 

 standpoint that you test the cow, and you can do that only by using 

 him sparingly, not breeding him indiscriminately to all the cows 

 in voiir herd, because you may undo what it h;is taken vou years 

 to build uj). You cannot bank entirely upon the ancestry or in- 

 dividuality. His prepotency can only be shown by actual test. 

 ^ly observation and experience is that if we as fanners would 

 be careful along this line, if we would liiid out tlic real worth of 

 the sires, and then breed oidy to cows which are profitable, wo 

 would make a marked improvement iu the utility of our dairy 



