308 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



as well as cotton-seed. They all tell the story of these by-products 

 which are coming up in such a way that they are splendid dairy 

 foods, whether they come from the flour mill, the linseed oil mill or 

 the cotton-seed mill; they put upon the market foods that can be 

 fed to such an advantage that you can continue increasing the milk 

 rather than simply to have a cow that you can milk for a few weeks 

 after she is fresh. 



The dairy animal was fitted to give milk so long as she nurtured 

 her calf, but we have succeeded in changing the dairy cow entirely 

 around. You take a cow that is properly handled under modern 

 methods of dairying, and you have a very different animal from 

 the one that used to be permitted to roam over perhaps a hundred 

 acres in the field. 



Take our dairy cows to-day, after they have been fed properly in 

 the barn, and I let them out upon a rich pasture of growing grass, 

 they would refuse to take a mouthful of food. You would say, it is 

 unnatural. It is, in one sense, but what difference does it make if 

 you provide the animal with superior food in your own dairy farm 

 and in your system of handling that animal, have a profit, whether 

 she eats grass or something else, and if you can bring that animal 

 into such relations and conditions that you can afford to feed her 

 a concentrated food from these by-products, why that is what you 

 want and we have simply hinted at it. If you can balance up a 

 ration in such a way that this cow will keep alive on this ration 

 and the surplus she puts in the bucket, that is the verification of the 

 method, and it is simply a business proposition, as much so as any- 

 thing can be, and the whole thing is, to study the animal, to find 

 out on what she thrives the best, and what is best for her. 



Take those cattle at St. Louis. They tried different ways of 

 feeding them, and you have heard me speak time and again 

 insisting upon the right method of feeding the dairy cow. 

 When they tried it at St. Louis and experimented upon differ- 

 ent methods of feeding, what did they find? They found out that 

 they had to come right back to cut hay instead of feeding long hay; 

 found that they had to make up a regular mixture with hay and 

 ensilage and grain to keep those cattle upon their feet. We know 

 that is the only way, from experience. We are in the dairy day after 

 day and have studied all these conditions; I call that common sense. 

 To milk a cow seven months in the year and then let her lie simply 

 fallow, to have a cow fresh in the Spring and let her go dry in the 

 Fall, these are the methods that you are to consider. 



We turn a cow out to grass in the springtime and let her go dry 

 in the Fall, said some of the people when I was up there. They 

 said the truth is that the milk gets so scarce up there in the winter 

 time that we have to raise our babies on cider. 



Situated as I am in the dairy business on a large farm and having 

 no place for growing our own cattle for the first year or two, I was 

 obliged to go into the market to buy a lot of cattle this Spring, 

 although the Fall is the better time for buying cattle. In the Fall 

 many persons have cattle running out and grazing, and then as 

 winter approaches, and they realize that they will have to put them 

 into the barn and feed them through the winter, they think that 

 they had better sell and that is the reason why you can usually buy 

 cattle at better advantage in the Fall of the year than you can in 



