420 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



heifers. Have fed and cared for them as well as I could and they 

 have paid me well. 



One other requisite of a good breeder is to be a -good feeder. 

 Some say that it cloes'nt pay to feed, but my cows pay ms for corn 

 meal fed to them when on pasture — that is a reasonable amount. I 

 have had a two-year old heifer give me 60 pounds of milk in one 

 day and over 10,000 pounds in a year, but she was well fed and well 

 cared for. My plan is to feed the heifer well before calving and 

 get her to make as good an udder as possible. When she freshens 

 milk her at least three times per day. This will relieve the udder 

 and reduce the inflamation if there is any. It will also stimulate to 

 milk more and give her much more capacity. This plan should be 

 followed for thirty days at least. I would rather have a heifer be- 

 fore she has her first calf than to have a mature cow unless she 

 has been treated this way. The extra milk she gives will pay for 

 the extra work and there are not many spoiled udders when treated 

 in this manner. I often hear it said that pure bred herds do not 

 pay as well as grades because the pure breeders feed heavier. If 

 every breeder of pure bred stock would build a modern silo he 

 would be able to keep his stock at a moderate cost and keep them 

 in fine shape. 



I expect to winter about 45 head on 8 acres of corn in the silo 

 and for dry roughage put in eight acres of kaffir corn, sown broad 

 cast. For protein feed I am using cotton seed meal and oil meal 

 which, fed with corn meal, gives a good flow of milk at a light cost. 

 If one starts a herd he should be careful in selecting his foundation. 

 Have for your motto, "not how many" but "how good." Do not 

 buy some other fellow's tail enders and expect them to be any bet- 

 ter than grades. Remember that in selecting your herd leader that 

 he is all of three-fifths of the herd. 



Many ask me if there is not a possibility of the pure bred 

 dairy cattle business being overdone. This fall I needed more cows 

 and heifers to eat up the rough feed. After doing some correspond- 

 ing I crossed several states before I could find what I wanted, and 

 was very much surprised to see how scarce pure breeds of all the 

 dairy classes were. 



There are so few herds in t he middle west today that a man 

 who starts a good one and developes it properly has a sure sale 

 for the surplus of his herd. 



In conclusion, will say if a man expects to make a success of 

 his herd he must study his breed well, take several farm and dairy 

 papers and get all out of them he can. 



