STATE DAIRY ASSOCIATION. 747 



LESSONS FROM THE WORK AMONG THE DAIRYMEN OF 

 NORTHERN ILLINOIS. 



A. J. GLOVER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, HOARD'S DAIRYMAN. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen— I scarcely feel that I am an up- 

 to-date young man according to the description I have heard this after- 

 noon, for I never owned a rubber- tired top buggy, or enjoyed the com- 

 pany of a beautiful girl. While my wife is not very good looking, yet, 

 she is the best I have. 



The Secretary wants me to tell you something about the lessons that 

 I drew from my work in Illinois. I told you yesterday that I had con- 

 ducted the field work for about three years, and in that time had observed 

 a number of things of interest. We might study the needs of the dairy 

 farmer. Now what is the object of this work? W^hat was the object 

 of the Illinois appropriation of $10,000 annually for the dairy field work? 

 Was it an investment that she would never get interest upon? Was it 

 to give men good positions? I was a Minnesota boy and hadn't the 

 faintest idea of coming to Illinois until they approached me to take this 

 position in the field. Certainly, then, it was not with a view to giving 

 her boys employment, but rather of getting value received for the amount 

 of money invested. 



The object of this work was to make the farmers see themselves as 

 other people saw them. Many experiment stations had found out that 

 certain cows were kept with profit, some with intermediate loss, and 

 others with material loss. In order to have the farmers see these things, 

 in order to bring them face to face with the facts as they existed upon 

 the farm, I was sent into the field to show them the way. The results of 

 that work have been of considerable interest to me, and it has been 

 of a great deal of value. I hope, I sincerely hope, that I may tell you 

 something that will be of interest to you. The increase in the dairy 

 work has been very marked. If I could increase every dairy like the one 

 I tested I should be pleased. You will remember that I told you yester- 

 day that from 145 cows the second year they received more milk and 

 more butter fat than they did from the 160 the first year. There were 

 15 less to milk and feed, and there was an increase of over 1,000 pounds 

 of butter fat. In my work I have observed how many poor cows are 

 kept. Cows are kept that have no particular excuse for being. It is 

 a serious mistake for a dairy farmer to start out in that way. Some 

 farmers will buy a certain breed of cattle and get along nicely for a time 

 and then change from one breed to another. What I mean is this. A 

 man will start out with a beautiful herd of Jerseys. He keeps those for 



