MISCELLANEOUS. 349 



unfair to assume that there were others among the herds of the State 

 which, had they freshened at the right time, would have done equally as 

 well. If these could be produced and developed on Missouri soil, others 

 equally as good can be. 



Of course many of the details of the work, as done in the test, are 

 not applicable to practical dairying, but the principles hold good, and 

 many of the methods are the same that have been used to build up suc- 

 cessful herds. The only way that a man can build up a herd in produc- 

 tion is to know what his cows are doing. The only w'ay to determine 

 whether a cow is yielding a profit or not is to know how much her keep 

 costs and what her product is worth. The scales played an important 

 part in obtaining this information. The cow's feed should be weighed 

 at intervals to furnish a fairly accurate estimate of the amount of feed 

 which she consumes ; but more important is the weighing of the milk. 

 Do not trust your judgment. Of all the milkers in the test, some of whom 

 have had twenty years' experience in the milking and weighing of milk, 

 not one could guess the yield of a cow at a milking to a pound. This 

 may seem close, but the doubtful pound is the one that counts. Particu- 

 larly is the total yield for any period of value to the feeder in compound- 

 ing the ration. A slump of a few pounds is a warning to him that the 

 machine is not running smoothly. Perhaps the limit of the cow's capacity 

 has been reached, or if she has been steadily on the same combination of 

 feeds, he is warned that she is tiring of them, and that her system de- 

 mands a change. On the other hand, the effect of a gradual addition 

 of any feed can best be determined by the resulting milk flow. It is 

 impossible to remember the small amounts by which each of a large 

 number of cows in the herd varies from day to day, and finally the record 

 becomes of particular value when it extends over a long period of years, 

 forming, as it does, a basis for breeding operations. 



The Babcock test is, of course, the most convenient way -to deter- 

 mine the yield of butter. Of course the test need only be made at regular 

 intervals, as once a week, or even once a month. To show that these 

 methods are practicable we need only mention the fact that four of the 

 Missouri herds represented in the demonstration have been built up by 

 judicious use of the scales and the Babcock test. It is also of interest 

 to note that three of these herds have been successful in the leading show 

 yards of the country during the past decade. From this it appears that 

 high production is by no means absent in prize-winning herds. 



The greatest lesson for the dairyman taught by this test is that he 

 must study his cows not as a breed, or as a herd, but as individuals. No 

 breed has the monopoly on all good cows. When one cow makes 330 



