Missouri State Dairy Association. 



A condensed report of the proceedings of the fifteenth annual meet- 

 ing held in Brookfield, February 15, 16, 17, 1905. 



THE BUSINESS COW FOR THE BUSINESS DAIRYiMAN. 



(Prof. R. M. Washburn, Uopt. Dairy Husbandry, Columbia, Missouri.) 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : 



It is not my intention to detain you very long this morning as there 

 are men of more years, more experience and more general ability to 

 follow. 



There are some features of the work, however, that I think it will 

 be well for us to look into. I am always reminded when I begin to 

 speak on this subject of how prone we all are never to recognize the op- 

 portunities that we have until we have been off and seen what the other, 

 fellow has. It is a common occurrence that the boy on the farm does not 

 recognize or appreciate the advantages that he has until he has gone out 

 " into the world and tried to win his place in the world ; then he returns 

 quite well satisfied that the old farm is not such a bad place after all. 



If any of you were to visit Minneapolis or Saint Paul, one of the 

 first things you w'ould go to see would be the falls of Minnehaha, so 

 beautifully described in the poetry of Longfellow, but those who live near 

 those falls do not appreciate them. I was a grown man myself before 

 I saw them although I was raised near them. It became my pleasure 

 recently to visit the eastern states, and I had not been in Philadelphia 

 two hours before I went to see old Liberty Bell, but many of those 

 who live near it have never seen it. 



Naturally, coming from a dairy family and a dairy state, with a 

 dairy education and a dairy purpose in mind and heart, I was looking at 

 the eastern states to see how they were educated to dairy work ; I was 

 interested to see how dairying was made to pay in the eastern states. 

 One farmer was making money on a run down farm by feeding his 

 cows well on western corn, and grain and by-products of the western 

 ■mills, and selling milk in the city. He was gaining steadily and im- 

 proving his land all the time. In some other districts I noticed a great 

 lack of what we would call energy, but I was impressed with the 



