192 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



The first thing in the care of the cow, is careful feeding. If she 

 produces twenty pounds of milk it will cost you approximately ten 

 cents to keep that cow alive, and ten cents to produce the twenty 

 pounds of milk. If forty pounds is her production it will cost you 

 twenty cents plus ten cents to keep her alive, or thirty cents in all. 

 This is just to give you an idea of how the cost of production can 

 be cut down. You must produce your crops just as cheaply as pos- 

 sible, and produce just as large ones as possible, and the cheaper 

 you can produce your feed, the cheaper you can produce milk. At the 

 present time the producer has little or nothing to say as to how much 

 he shall receive for his milk. He sells to the milk dealer or cream- 

 eryman and takes what they are willing to give him. If that does 

 not suit him, he makes butter or something else. The one thing to 

 do is to cut down the cost of production, and then make more money 

 on that end of our dairy. 



One point I intend to talk of, is the point of breeding. We should 

 have more of the spirit of co-operation. If we could get more of 

 that spirit of working together everyone would benefit. For example, 

 one man has a Guernsey, another a Brown Swiss, or Ayrshire or 

 something else. Now that may be all right, but when you have a 

 surplus, what is the result? You sell to the butcher, because no one 

 will come in and take the one animal that you have to offer. Your 

 neighbor is in the same position, but if you have one breed in a 

 neighborhood, you can find a buyer for all your surplus stock, and 

 have it shipped out in carlots. In this way much better prices can 

 be secured for all stock. Take Centre county, for instance, up there 

 in one neighborhood every one had Guernsey, and a buyer came in 

 from Ohio and brought up all their surplus stock, amounting, I 

 think, to three carloads, at prices far better than the farmer could 

 have gotten locally. It certainly paid these men to have the same 

 breed. Up in Bradford county very nearly the same thing occurred 

 with Holsteins. In every county the farmers that breed dairy cat- 

 tle should pool their interests, as they do out in Waukesha county, 

 Wisconsin, where they breed Guernseys very extensively. Two years 

 ago their sales amounted to something over a hundred thousand dol- 

 lars on surplus stoclc only. Their main business is supplying milk 

 for the city of Chicago. They tell men that in this county there has 

 been a start made in Ayrshires. I have not seen them myself, but I 

 think this is a county that would be very well adapted to Ayrshires, 

 and as I understand it, the market is mainly for milk. In the milk 

 business, Holsteins or Ayrshires will do very well unless you get an 

 extra price for your milk. If you keep your cows for butter, then 

 get Jerseys or Guernseys. 



The next question is. How much milk you can produce per acre; 

 You can make any construction if you want, and you will find the 

 subject open to criticism. I will quote a few figures from the 1910 

 Census of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The average Penn- 

 sylvania farm of eighty acres furnishes a good basis, if divided into 

 four fields of twenty acres each, and planted in corn, oats, wheat and 

 grass, would yield an average production of, wheat, 14^ bushels, 

 oats, 29^ bushels; corn, 34 bushels; hay, 2,400 pounds. This is a 

 very common rotation practiced in Pennsylvania at the present time. 

 Now, how many cows could we keep on this eighty acre farm? If 

 every bit of the crops produced were fed to the average cow of Penn- 



