388 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



and help him to test his herd and figure out just what the business 

 is doing. We find it a bad policy to try to get him to do too many 

 things at once. When we start on one line like herd testing we do 

 not bother much about other things, until we get results in this 

 line. When he finds that a half or two-thirds of his herd will make 

 more profit than all of it originally made, his confidence in our work 

 increases so that when we decide that he should have a silo (which 

 is done as soon as conditions will warrant it) he is willing to put 

 it up. Later on w T hen other improvements are suggested he is glad 

 to make them, for now he is beginning to realize that he is getting 

 into a new business. His dairy is becoming profitable and he is 

 becoming more and more interested in every detail of the work. 

 He has bought a pure bred bull and anxiously waits for his first 

 heifers from the best cows to come in, to see whether or not they 

 are going to be better than their dams. The old filthy barn yards 

 have been cleaned up. The barn now has a good floor and glass 

 windows, a silo stands nearby, the cows are well fed and clean, the 

 manure is put directly upon the fields or is put under a dry shed 

 instead of being piled up against the side of -the barn where it was 

 thrown out of a hole in the wall, the fields are becoming more and 

 more productive, the dwelling has been painted, and there is no 

 subject that is discussed around the fireside of the home quite as 

 frequently or with quite so much interest as the dairy. While at 

 one of the farms a short while ago, where this work has been in 

 progress for something over a year, the wife of the owner joined 

 us when we went to see the new dairy house which had just been 

 completed, and when we got down into the pasture she seemed to 

 known as much about the records of the cows as her husband. The 

 greatest interest was shown in the work of the herd, and as each 

 cow that was to be disposed of because of low production was 

 pointed out, this remark was made "She goes to the Shambles." All 

 this is due to the fact that the dairy has become profitable, and it 

 has become profitable because of the application of dairy knowl- 

 edge. 



One herd of 22 cows that was hardly paying expenses when 

 this work began, made a clear profit last year of $805.32, or an 

 average of $67.00 per month. Practically all the cows that were 

 originally in the herd had been sold and others purchased. 



Another herd of fourteen cows that was making $1.80 profit 

 per cow per month when the work began, was making a profit of 

 $4.19 per cow per month ten months later. 



Another herd of eight cows that was making a loss of 6 cents 



