VERMONT DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 125 



er $45. The one receiving- $45 for the milk of each cow 

 raised his calves on skimmilk and sold them at weaning- time 

 in the fall for an average of $18 each, giving an income from 

 the milk and calf of each cow of $63. At this rate a herd of 

 only twenty cows would give an annual income of $1,260 cash. 



Here is an instance with two men with the same sky above 

 them, the same earth beneath them and the same creamery 

 before them. ■ One received 525 per cent more in gross product 

 than the other, but that is not all. One kept cows at a profit 

 and the other at an absolute loss. What do you suppose 

 caused the difference? One man accepted the fact like a sen- 

 sible man, that he ought to know something about this busi- 

 ness of keeping cows for dairy purposes and that he ought to 

 keep a dairy kind of a cow. The other said no to all these 

 propositions. How true it is in this business of keeping cows, 

 as the good book says: " The wise man forseeth the evil and 

 hideth himself, but the foolish pass on and are punished. " 



I would almost guarantee to double any man's receipts from 

 his cows in clear profits if I could get him to spend only $5 a 

 year for sound dairy reading, providing he will take to heart 

 what he reads and do as other men are doing, who have tried 

 the better way and have succeeded. 



"When you hear a man say, as so many do say, "I have no 

 time for reading," or " I can't afford a little money wherewith 

 to buy the results of experience of other men," who have been 

 more successful than he with cows, you are tempted to ask if 

 he would be willing to pay fifty cents for a dollar greenback? 

 The difficulty lies right there and no where else. These men 

 with /poor, unprofitable cows will not post themselves on bet- 

 ter methods. 



Many farmers read about what successful dairymen are do- 

 ing with their cows, and are apt to say: 



" O well, I never can do anything like that," or else they 

 fly the track the other way, because the results do not accord 

 with their experience, and they say it is all a falsehood. 



In my experience on this dairy question, going back to 1870, 

 I can say that I know of hundreds of men who were down to 

 the lowest round in the ladder, who today, are among the 

 wealthiest and most accomplished dairy farmers in the land. 



I can point you to a host of them in my own state who fif- 

 teen years ago and some not more than ten, were owning 

 herds of cows from which they did not receive more than 125 

 to 150 pounds of butter per cow. Everything about them, 

 from the dairy standpoint, was in the same low condition. 

 Today their herds average over 300 pounds per cow. Every 

 gave 765 pounds less of milk than the Jersey cow Louise and 

 produced forty pounds more of butter. 



