YIELD OF DAIRY COWS. 193 



breed from to keep up your stock, you will in time have the 

 animals you ought to have. 



The great trouble is, we do not give these matters the con- 

 sideration and study we should. We come here and listen to 

 these lectures and discussions, we get pretty full of them, we 

 enjoy them, and then we go home, and when the reports come, 

 we do not study them as we ought to do. Take that lecture of 

 Dr. Nichols, or the one to which we have just listened by Mr. 

 Flint, — it was pleasant to hear them, and we think we know 

 all about them ; but every sentence is just as full of meat as a 

 chestnut is of its kernel, and a man needs to take these reports 

 and study them out for himself, and think them out. That is 

 the only way in which he can get all the benefit of these meet- 

 ings. What we hear here comes in one ear and goes out at 

 the other, except some few things that appertain to our par- 

 ticular calling ; but these reports contain a mine of information 

 and learning, and if, when we get them, instead of putting them 

 on the shelves, to see how nice and clean the books look, we 

 will take them up and read them, we shall be the wiser for it, 

 and the men who come here in after years will be able to go 

 forward to new fields of study and investigation. 



Mr. Wetherell, of Boston, referred to the fact that the aver- 

 age yield of cheese per cow in this Commonwealth appeared, 

 from the reports of the cheese factories, to be not more than 

 350 pounds, while in Herkimer County, N. Y., he had been 

 assured by a dairyman of long experience, that he had cows that 

 would produce 800 pounds of cheese. He thought the amount of 

 milk per cow would not average over 500 gallons, and the 

 amount of butter not more than 150 pounds. He argued from 

 these facts the importance of paying more attention to the rais- 

 ing of good cows. 



Mr. Ellsworth, of Barre, said that the cheese factories in 

 his section of tli3 State did not run more than five months in a 

 year, and some of them only three. Their cows produced a 

 large amount of milk after the factories stopped. Some of the 

 farmers made butter, some sent their milk to the condensing 

 factory, and others sent it to Boston, so that the reports of the 

 cheese factories afforded no data whatever by which to arrive at 

 the production of milk in that county. 

 25 



