380 • MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



a special dairy cow ; but if I wanted to raise beef and wanted to save all 

 my by-product I would certainly follow Mr. Harned's advice and take 

 a dual purpose cow. I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that I believe 

 that is the best paper I have ever heard read on the dual purpose cow. 



Mr. Glover — I think Mr. Ellis has got very close to the situation. 

 He said something we can all sanction. As a newspaper man and as a 

 student of dairying all my life, I know the English language does not 

 always express our thoughts clearly. In other words, it is hard for a 

 speaker to stand before an audience and state his sentiments so that 

 everybody will get the true meaning of what the speaker is talking about. 

 We are confused. We cannot express our thoughts clearly. Now, he 

 said if he was going to be a dairyman he wvsuld have a dairy cow ; that's 

 good — that's all the special dairy advocate needs. Then he said, if he 

 was going to be a breeder of beef cattle he would select a beef cow that 

 would give enough milk to support her calf ; but, gentlemen, the man that 

 keeps that kind of a cow is not, strictly speaking, a dairyman ; he is a 

 beef man. Therefore, we cannot say that the special dairy cow has any 

 relation to the so-called dual purpose cow. I have never yet in all my 

 travels found a man that was successfully breeding the dual purpose 

 cow — that is, the cow that will give as much milk as a dairy animal and 

 at the same time produce as much beef as the special beef cow. That is 

 where the so-called dual purpose cow is held up. You cannot comprise 

 in one animal the power of producing the maximum yields of milk and 

 butter and at the same time the maximum yields of beef. That has never 

 been done. I have traveled all over this country, and have never found 

 anyone doing it — no one in Iowa or Minnesota. We will grant openly 

 and above board that there is such a thing as a dual purpose cow, but 

 you have never seen that animal reproduce herself; that is, she hasn't 

 any prepotency — she will not produce a heifer as good as she is. You 

 are dividing her prepotency, if I may use that term. You breed an animal 

 for beef and you get a certain form ; you breed for the dairy and you 

 get .another form. Now, I believe that the dairyman or the beef man 

 of Missouri should begin with the stock he has. If he wants to be a beef 

 man I believe he should keep cows that will produce him good calves, 

 but I would not class it as a dual purpose animal, but simply as a beef 

 animal, because I think that the idea of the dual purpose cow, the term, 

 if you please, is misleading, and we want to clear it up here. It is mis- 

 leading in this, that she is expected to give as much milk and butter fat 

 as a special dairy cow, and at the same time produce beef calves. Now, 

 if you are satisfied to sit down under a cow that will bring you from 150 

 to 200 pounds of butter in a year, and are contented to milk her and be 



