No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 315 



of the food it is not simply enough to have a system of feeding, 

 but there is a great deal in the way you handle the dairy cow and 

 treat her as she stands in the stall. How often on the farms do 

 3'Ou see some rough hired man go to milk a cow and he comes up 

 to her and says, "Stand over here, you old thing,'' and he hits her 

 alongside of the head to get her in shape to milk, instead of giving 

 her a soft stroke down the back, or perhaps he goes at her with a 

 real rough, new sharp currj-comb, and rubs it roughly up and down 

 and along her sides and calls that currjing. That is not currying, 

 and no wonder with such treatment as that, that your cow does not 

 produce the milk that she would if she was properly handled; or 

 perhaps you neglect to brush her, or clean her off. You say she is 

 not dirty. Now I want to say to you that a bath with a brush for 

 a cow is just as important as a dust bath for a chicken, and just as 

 important as a nice bath is for a good, hearty baby. Because a 

 chicken is a chicken, does not amount to saying that it can be neg- 

 lected, nor is it true of the cow. You are not satisfied when you 

 simply sit down to a good table yourselves if you have no comfortable 

 clothing and no comfortable heat in the room if you have the very 

 best of food. You will say, ^'I am just dying for a drink, and you 

 want the water," and so you see what it is to go through it. Your 

 wants must be suj>plied; you must«have comfort; you must have the 

 wajter; you must have the food; you must have your bath, in order 

 to be a real comfortable, healthy person, and it is the same with 

 the dairy cow. 



Can you make me believe that that cow is better because she roams 

 th'e 'field, and she comes in in the evening with a little bag that is 

 not thicker than my two hands, and you expect to get milk from 

 her? You can't make me believe such stuff. I can take that cow 

 and produce a very different condition, and yet you will say, keeping 

 cows like Detrich does, it is all wrong. Every spot of land that he 

 has ever touched and the little fifteen acre farm down at Flourtown 

 was a hatful of money, and the man that ran it got a hatful of money 

 for doing it. We are speaking about this from the standpoint of 

 business. 



That is not the half of it. We have only told you half, when we 

 talked to you about the feeding of the cow. Here comes the great 

 benefit for your farm, is getting the whole benefit of that undigested 

 food which the cow could not turn into milk, and then isn't the 

 dairy business paying when you can take all that you have bought 

 in the market and after the digestible part has been turned into 

 milk or into cream, then that which remains gives you the very thing 

 that you want, and you know there is not a fertilizer that will com- 

 pare with that manure that is made in a dairy barn. 



If the cow is properly fed, you have the very same ingredients 

 that your fertilizer bag claims to have. I would like to see the farm 

 that can get better and better through commercial fertilizers. I can 

 show you plenty of soil that has got better and better through the 

 humus that comes from the dairy barn. 



BREED. 



Now to speak of the breeding of the dairy cow. Some man per- 

 haps immediately thinks that we are about to advance some fantas- 

 tic idea, and that these high-priced cattle are no good, because you 



