298 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



Prof. Eckles : IMost farmers in this State are not situated like Mr. 

 Patterson in regard to the number of their cows. Most farmers of this 

 State have only six to ten or twelve cows. Would Mr. Patterson rec- 

 ommend a man having no more cows than that to fit himself for making 

 butter or sell his milk to a creamery or separate his cream and ship it 

 to the creamery? 



Mr. Patterson: Circumstances alter cases. A man should be his 

 own judge as to what is best. If he is near a creamery and has confi- 

 dence in it that it can make as good an article of butter as he can, it 

 might pay for him to sell them his cream. But I was speaking of the 

 man who does not live near a creamery. There is no creamery near us. 

 It will pay the man who has ten cows to get a separator and he will 

 soon have enough money to have twenty cows. I always advise a good 

 sized separator. 



Mr. Erwin : I want to corroborate what INIr. Patterson has said in 

 regard to the private dairy. After quitting the dairy business for a 

 number of years I drifted back into it and am milking some twenty- 

 four or twenty-five cows. I make my butter at home and I find that 

 it brings in a very comfortable income and I think pigs and chickens 

 are a natural adjunct of the dairy. I have found since I have been 

 engaged in the business of dairying in a smaller way that the actual 

 number of dollars and cents gained have been greater than when I ran 

 it on a more extensive scale. You cannot take ten cows and get as 

 good results in proportion as you can get from one cow and when you 

 increase the number to fifty or seventy-five or one hundred cows, the 

 amount of gain per cow is much more with the smaller number of cows. 



SOME POINTERS FROM TWENTY YEARS' EXPERIENCE IN 

 THE RETAIL MILK BUSINESS. 



(By Mr. A. H. Shepard, Columbia, Mo.) 



The point that I have always found most necessary in supplying 

 the milk to the city market is that you should always have an adequate 

 supply, not only of good, pure new milk, but of good cream, good sweet 

 skim milk and sour milk. There is a demand for all these and if the 

 customer fails to get them then they revert back to the town cow and 

 you have lost a customer, but if you are always ready to supply the 

 demand there is no trouble in maintaining a good trade in a town like 

 this. It is important, of course, absolutely necessary, that the goods 

 you offer are of such a quality that your customers can have perfect 



