State Dairy Association. 395 



individual cows. But do we clearly understand that some herds 

 do not pay for the feed given them? That other herds pay too 

 small a margin of profit to justify the investment in money and 

 labor? And that still other herds are making their owners big 

 money? When we realize this, it is easy to see how the profit can 

 be doubled. Do dairymen in general know that these differences 

 rest on plain causes that may be readily understood, and that a 

 change from the poor herd to the highly profitable herd is a com- 

 paratively easy matter, within the reach of any farmer who is able 

 to keep cows at all? 



Ten years of observation of Illinois dairy herds and the indi- 

 vidual testing of more than 1,000 cows in fifty herds, has given 

 the speaker positive evidence of the practical worthlessness of 

 about one-fourth the cows in these herds and the exceedingly great 

 efficiency and value of the best one-fourth. Both these classes of 

 cows are common in every community, and as a rule there are 

 some of each in every herd. 



NO ACCOUNTS KEPT. 



It is equally surprising that these poor cows are not known to 

 the owner; their demand on his charity is not suspected. It is 

 very hard to find a dairyman who employs any means whatever of 

 knowing the exact returns from each cow in his herd. The ordi- 

 nary dairyman has no idea of how much milk, butter fat or butter 

 each animal produces in a year, or how much it costs to feed her. 

 The natural result with the majority of our dairy farmers is large 

 investment of money and labor for too small returns. 



Few, if any, herds we have tested contained no cows of lowest 

 fourth that produce only 133 pounds fat. Nearly every herd also 

 has some good cows producing over 300 pounds fat. Have a profit- 

 able standard and raise this each year, selling all cows that fall 

 below this standard. This is easily done, and it requires much less 

 energy to weed out the poor cows than it does to continue to milk 

 them. 



Such records as we have discussed indicate that one-fourth of 

 all the dairy cows in the state may be placed with Rose in the same 

 general class of high-producers. This is made still more emphatic 

 by the contrast of the poorest one-fourth of the same 554 cows, 

 yielding an average of only 133 !/o pounds butter fat. 



