STATE DAIRY ASSOCIATION. 685 



THE PROFITABLE DAIRY COW. 



PKOF. C. S. PLUMB, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY. 



Some years ago a young man named John Winslow graduated at an 

 agricultural college. He was born and reared on a New England hill 

 farm, ihere his father won a living for the family, in the main from the 

 keep of a herd of cows, the milk of which was sold to a nearby creamery. 

 It was slow work, for the profits were not large, but they made a living. 



The young man had a love for the countiy and the farm home. He 

 had received a district school education, and gradually the idea had 

 crystallized in his mind that he needed more education. His attention 

 was directed to the agricultural college. An investigation convinced him 

 that this was the type of institution that would enable him to become 

 a broader, brainier and more capable farmer. Ambition, health, work 

 brought him through college. The four years passed by rapidly, and 

 once again he was back on the farm. 



But this was a different young man returning to the farm from the 

 callow youth who had gone out from Rockdale four years before. His 

 intellectual forces had strengthened and his capacity for grasping and 

 solving problems had rapidly grown. His father soon realized that the 

 young man of 22 was no longer a boy. He was a man whose judgment 

 he could rely upon. 



On various occasions during his college life, when visiting home, 

 John had looked over the herd, and the thought gi-adually grew upon 

 his mind that the cattle in the stable were not what they should be. 

 In his Junior year he had taken a course of instruction, which involved 

 a term of work studying breeds of live stock, another term was partly 

 devoted to the principles of breeding, and the subject of feeds and feeding 

 occupied several hours a week the thira term. All through this year of 

 studj', he had been given practical work in judging live stock. His father 

 owned a dairy herd, and the instructor in animal husbandry in the 

 college had been teaching him important lessons, which in his opinion 

 had a direct application to the conditions at home. 



What were some of the real practical truths that he had been taught 

 leading up to success? He had learned by repeated illustrations, that like 

 produces like, and that it was a law of breeding that was a part of the 

 creed of every great breeder. That poor animals mated produced poor 

 animals. That sir^s from superior ancestry produced superior offspring. 

 That no great breeder -had ever risen to heights of eminence and built 

 up a great herd, excepting by weeding out the inferior and breeding to 

 the superior. That pedigree was worth nothing unless backed by consti- 

 tution and individual merit. That no man could be regarded as an intelli- 

 gent breeder who did not breed on the basis of a knowledge of some of 

 these things. 



