Vermont Dairymen's Association. 163 



The way has been pointed out. We know that individual 

 cows differ materially in the amount of product we get from 

 them ; we know that under different conditions many of our cows 

 would do much better than they do at present ; and yet we fail to 

 apply these facts to our own individual farm practice. The Ex- 

 periment Stations have published bulletins setting forth all of 

 these facts. The dairy press has, through its wide reach of the 

 dairy farmers, a thousand times brought forth these facts to the 

 dairymen, and yet they fail to act. The probable cause of this 

 failure must be sought and a remedy applied that will bring about 

 a different state of affairs. The dairy farmer is a busy man, who 

 has many things to attend to. He knows that he ought to keep 

 records of his individual cows, that he ought to study breeding 

 and feeding more than he does and apply the facts to his indi- 

 vidual herd, yet he feels that these things take time, and time 

 is one oi the most precious things on the dairy farm. There is 

 also in many quarters a failure to appreciate that the facts set 

 forth in our dairy literature apply in the individual cases. 



It was a study of these conditions that, a few years ago, 

 caused a few farmers in Denmark to organize into what they have 

 called their Test Associations. In these associations there is a 

 community of interest. The facts that were known to these 

 farmers before and unapplied, as they are today in our own 

 country, were kept constantly before them by a man employed to 

 visit the farms regularly and to point out where improvement 

 could be made in feeding, to take records of the individual 

 animals and to point out to their owner that this animal was 

 profitable and that that one was unprofitable. From one organiza- 

 tion, started but a few short years ago, this work has spread all 

 over Denmark, northern Germany, through Holland and Bel- 

 gium, over into Sweden and even into Russia. There are hun- 

 dreds of organizations of this kind today in Europe which are 

 doing a wonderful work in increasing the profitableness of dairy- 

 ing in the sections where they have been introduced. It is safe 

 to say that in Denmark alone the net profits of the farmers have 

 been increased fifty per cent inside of the last decade, by methods 

 of this kind. 



While in this country conditions are so different from what 

 they appear abroad that it may not be possible or profitable to 

 adopt their methods in this covmtry, some adaptation of their 

 principle of work can be applied to our conditions whereby the 

 farmers may be brought together to study these questions and the 

 community of interest encouraged, thus making it possible for 

 those men who are busy with their own individual work to em- 

 ploy some one who can look after these details for them, that are 

 now somewhat hazy and seem to be beyond their reach. The 



