STATE DAI«Y ASSOCIATIOiN. 687 



dairy cow did hers into milk. Then there was a third cow, neither lean 

 nor fat, sort of half way between the other two, with a fairly large 

 udder, that they were informed was a "dual purpose cow." As this 

 young man from that mountain farm compared these cows, and as he 

 later on came to be more and more acquainted with the details of 

 difference, he began to feel that the herd at home was far, far from 

 its profitable possibilities. 



There were other lessons taught at this agricultural college that bore 

 much on future problems to be solved. The college instructor in dairy- 

 ing required the students to test the cows of the college herd occasionally. 

 They were obliged to take samples of the milk of each cow of the herd 

 at each milking for a number of days in succession, and find out how 

 much fat there was in the milk, so as to compare values. Here .John 

 learned that two cows might be giving exactlj^ the same amount of milk, 

 though that of one contained twice as much butter-fat as the other. As 

 creameries paid for milk on the basis of its butter-fat content, he soon 

 saw that quality as well as quantity was an important consideration with 

 milk production. Thus as he attended his daily duties about the college, 

 he came to see that success on that dairy farm was dependent on several 

 things, each important in itself. 



These were some of the things taught this young man during the four 

 years prior to his home-coming, and their value was never underestimated 

 by him. Not long after his return his father gave him a half interest in 

 the farm, and he settled down in a partnership full of anticipation of 

 the future. 



There was in his herd at Rockdale 16 native cows. They were just 

 common, plain, everyday scrubs. John's father fancied some of them 

 mightily, but he was not fortified by facts in this position. One day the 

 junior member of the firm came home with a spring balance. He 

 proposed to begin weighing the daily milk yield of each cow. He knew 

 it would not take much extra time, and they would leai*n something of 

 what the cows were doing. The senior member smiled, but thought it 

 a harmless pastime. 



John said, "Father, we don't know enough about what our cows are 

 doing. Do you know that records show that the average dairy cow in 

 this State -produces only 150 pounds of butter a year? There have been 

 some mighty interesting investigations made by some of our experiment 

 stations, which prove that we dairymen have some truths to learn that 

 we should have learned long ago. Now, for example, the Illinois Experi- 

 ment Station years ago, published a bulletin giving records of individual 

 cows on eight farms in that State. It showed that there were 144 cows 

 in these eight herds for a year's test. One herd made a net loss of $4.54 

 on each cow, some made a small profit and one got good results. Just 

 think, six of these eight herds had cows that did not pay for the food 

 they con.sumed. They found all sorts of records among these cows, but 



