288 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL RErORT, 



COMMON OR DAIRY COW, WHICH? 



Now after seeing this disposition on the part of the farmer to use 

 the common cow, I wondered why this was. The question arose, is the 

 dairy cow, after all, best adapted for his work, for the conditions which 

 he has at home on the farm ? When I looked over the history of dairy- 

 hred herds that I have known, especially during the last twenty-five 

 years, I found a large majority of them were failures. The farmer 

 had read these accounts and was satisfied that the dairy cow necessi- 

 tated so much more work that if he attempted to use her, he would not 

 succeed. Now why was that so? Take for instance the southern part 

 of the state of Minnesota — a state that has made wonderful progress in 

 dairying. When the creamery work began there in 1890 the farms were 

 nearly all heavily mortgaged on account of the failure of the wheat 

 crop and in less than ten years that country was well to do from one 

 end to the other. 



Now that means that, while there is this large discrepancy between 

 the common cow and the dairy-bred cow, yet we must inquire, when 

 we recommend the dairy-bred cow, whether the conditions of the aver- 

 age farmer arc such that that cow will do better for the farmer than the 

 thoroughbred dairy cow. 



Fllustrating this matter a little further, taking the records of our 

 herd from year to year we found that the herd as a whole would yield 

 about 350 pounds of butter per year. Taking that herd and dividing 

 it into two, putting the common cows on one side and the dairy cows 

 on the other, the dairy cow, as a rule, gives 460 pounds of butter a year 

 and the common cow gives us about 290 pounds. Now it is generally 

 claimed by authorities that a cow will not pay for herself until she 

 reaches about a yield of two hundred pounds. There is a discrepancy 

 between this statement and the results that the farmers have obtained 

 in southern Minnesota. I have told you what progress they have made 

 with the common cow, and that that common cow falls short of 200 

 j)ounds of butter a year. 



During the time of the Paris Exposition, the general government 

 undertook to take the census of our best county, Freeborn county, Min- 

 nesota and canvass the farmers and ascertain the number of cows that 

 they were milking, the amount of milk that was going to the creameries, 

 the amount received for the milk and the yield per cow. Then a map 

 was made locating the different creameries in the county and these 

 statistics showed that the average yield per cow in Freeborn county 



