270 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



Take the best Holstein. She produced 12,111 pounds of milk and 

 538 pounds of butter in a year and the cost of her feed was $29.83. Let 

 us figure a little. Suppose we get twenty cents a pound for her butter. 

 Then take four-fifths of the milk as skim milk and allowing twenty cents 

 a hundred pounds as its value, then adding the value of the butter and 

 skim milk and subtracting the cost of her food for the year we have our 

 net profit. Whether these prices meet your approval or not we will hold 

 these figures to that basis, subjecting the produce of each cow to the 

 same test. Subtracting from the price received for her butter and the 

 skimmed milk the board bill of this cow and we have a profit of $97.15. 

 That is the money we receive for the actual work done by us on this 

 cow, and the interest on the capital invested in the cow and stables. 



Take the poorest Holstein cow. She produced 6,667 pounds of 

 milk and 246 pounds of butter and cost $21.71, making a profit of $38.16. 

 Notice, there is a difference of $58.99 between the net profit of these 

 two cows, both pure Holsteins, and a difference of only $8.12 in the cost 

 of feed. 



Take the Shorthorns, arranged in groups of three. The best Short- 

 horn gave 9,896 pounds of milk and 474 pounds of butter and cost for 

 her keeping $27.38. The average profit for these best three cows was 

 $76.23 at the same rate of figuring as above. 



Of the poorest three Shorthorns, one made a profit of $10.63, the 

 second poorest $10.03, ^^^ the poorest $6.86. 



There is a very interesting point right here. The poorest cow made 

 a little money, $6.86 for the whole year. Suppose we figure the cost 

 in work of that $6.86. Allowing that you are a good milker — which 

 most milkers are not — it will take five minutes to do each milking. This 

 is pretty quick work but a man can do it if he goes at it right. That makes 

 ten minutes a day at milking. Suppose she gives milk for ten months 

 in the year — how much time will be spent in the mere process of extract- 

 ing that milk? 50 hours. Suppose she is dry for two months of the 

 year, even then she will need to be cared for. It ought not to be un- 

 reasonable to suppose the care of a cow would take ten minutes a day for 

 six months, or thirty hours for the entire year. I do not think you can 

 care for your cows in less time than that, considering the cleaning and 

 repairing of stables, and feeding and watering the cows, the building 

 and repairing of the fences, etc. That makes us 80 hours of work for 

 $6.86 or 8.6 cents an hour or 86 cents a day, while the same amount of 

 work bestowed on a cow like the first would return a wage of $1.22 an 

 hour, or at the rate of $12.20 a day. Please understand me when I say 

 that in this country at the present time, in the ordinary dairy herd of 



