STATE DAIKY ASSOCIATION. 749 



two of the greatest preventives. The barn should also be kept warm 

 and comfortable. If you want to produce good butter you must take 

 good care of your cows. 



I must agree with Avhat the Governor said yesterday in regard to 

 two blades of grass growing Avhere one had been growing. I think I 

 must take exception to what Mr. Wilson said. He seemed to think that 

 we did not want to produce any more, but Avanted to produce a better 

 quality. We want to produce more, because there is a great demand fot 

 butter, good butter. AVhen butter is 35 cents a pound it is beyond the 

 reach of common people. You want to make two pounds where one was 

 before. We are using a pound of butter a day in my home. Can a man 

 that is getting $1.50 or $2.tX) a day afford to pay 30 cents a day for butter. 

 I am afraid he can scarcely afford to do it. Of coui'se we must have 

 quality. We must not forget that. I suppose that now one pound of 

 butter fat costs 20 cents to produce it. Wouldn't it be possible to make 

 this for seven and a half cents a pound? If this were true, couldn't you 

 afford to sell it for 15 cents. If this were true we would consume more, 

 and it would all work together for good to all people. How will we 

 manage to make it cheaper? We will have to use cheaper foods. We 

 will have to get better cows and learn the comparative value of feeding. 

 I find in my field work that the farmers do not study the comparative 

 value of feeds. For instance in the illustration I gave you yesterday, 

 that man could have sold his ton of corn and bought one ton of some- 

 thing else that would have contained more protein. Alfalfa is good in 

 a case like this. We must look for better cows and cheaper feed. 



I should encourage the use of silos where they are taken care of 

 correctly. It talvcs about 12 tons of corn silage to feed a cow 12 months. 

 It is a cheap feed. On this kind of feed a cow would require about 

 seven or eight pounds of hay, and a few pounds of grain to produce 350 

 or 400 pounds of butter. It certainly does make a splendid feed when 

 it is put up right. You should be careful about the premises, and not 

 let it lay around in the alley or on the barn floor. If you do not see 

 that there is none left lying around tlic result will be the infection 

 of your milk. 



We must be careful in raising our crops about the fertility of the soil, 

 this must be taken into consideration. We know that in many of the 

 older agricultural regions they are using dollars and dollars worth of 

 commercial fertilizers. AVe scarcely realize the immense amount of 

 money that is being paid out for fertilizers in this country. We must 

 think seriously of these things. For instance, when you sell one hundred 

 bushels of corn from your farm you sell about $18 worth of fertilizer, 

 that is, if you had to go into the open market and buy the fertilizer 

 that you take from the soil in 100 Imshels of corn, it would cost you 

 about $18. When you sell 500 pounds of butter fat which is equal to 

 100 bushels of corn you sell 15 cents worth of fertilizer from the soil, 

 and in 10,000 pounds of milk only $8 worth of fertilizer. 



