VERMONT DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 55 



he attends strictly to his own business and makes his own but- 

 ter than if he patronizes a creamery. 



Mr. Gale. I understood Mr. Vail to say that the per cent, 

 of butter fat in milk is uniform, is not affected by feeding - . 

 Do I understand by that that we can feed for milk only, and 

 such foods as will keep up the physical condition of the cow 

 and let her take care of the butter fat? 



Mr. Vail. This touches the old question which has been 

 in dispute between the scientific men and the dairymen. I 

 think there is no question but what we should feed, for milk, 

 and that the butter fat is a fixed thing 1 with the cow. If a 

 man goes to the station and sees the care with which the ex- 

 periments are tried there they will understand that the ordi- 

 nary man, however careful, with the conditions surrounding 

 him, cannot make such thorough tests; and the Experiment 

 Stations in this country and every other country are united in 

 the statement that a cow's butter fat is practically a perma- 

 nent thing, no matter what you feed her. You can test a cow 

 today and test her tomorrow and she may give a different per 

 cent, but test week in and week out and you will get a fairly 

 uniform per cent, of butter fat. If you doubt that, study the 

 frequent tests made at our own station, they show fluctuations 

 from day to day but at the end of the year the cow has not 

 varied much of any. There her per cent, is and there it stays 

 with that cow. Her milk may grow a little richer as the 

 heifer becomes a cow, but it stays with the cow, a quality 

 given her by heredity and it stays with her as long as she 

 gives milk, barring of course abnormal conditions, such as 

 sickness or starvation. 



Mr. Messer. I used to think that food was quite an impor- 

 tant factor in the quality of milk, but I have come to a dif- 

 ferent conclusion. I remember seeing not long ago the result 

 of an experiment made at the Geneva, New York, station 

 which many of you doubtless saw. A certain cow was sub- 

 ject to experiment to ascertain the amount of butter fat which 

 the cow gave under normal conditions. Then for a greater 

 or less time she was given a food from which the fat was al- 

 most entirely extracted, so that she was fed but six pounds of 

 fat in tne food given her for many weeks. The food was sub- 

 jected to extraction with naptha so as to eliminate nearly all 

 the fat. But there was no difference in the amount of butter fat 

 which that cow produced. She placed over ten times as much 

 f atin her milk as she ate in her food and she likewise fatted up 

 bodily. This seems to me evidence that the butter fat in a cow 

 does not result from the fat of the food that was given her at 

 any time, and while I had enough evidence before this, this ex- 



