EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. VI. No. 7. 



The desirability of more systematic and tlioroiigli feeding experiments 

 has at different times been nrged in tlie Experiment Station Eecord. 

 Many useful experiments in this line have already been made at our 

 stations. We have not, however, fully realized as yet that in order to 

 attain the highest success cooperative experiments involving many 

 animals and requiring the services of a large number of experts should 

 l)e conducted. Such experiments are costly, but their importance easily 

 justifies large expense on their account. Denmark's success in dairying- 

 commands the admiration of the agricultural world. In the following 

 pages Prof. F. W. Woll, of the Wisconsin Experiment Station, has at 

 our request shown in part why Denmark has attained such phenomenal 

 results with her milch cows. 



With an area of only 14,500 square miles and a population of some- 

 thing over 2,000,000 people, Denmark at the present receives every 

 year more than -$25,000,000 from abroad for her butter product, and in 

 the course of the last 10 years her exports of butter have more than 

 trebled. To trace the causes of such magnificent results is one of the 

 most interesting and proiitable tasks that the student of dairying can 

 desire. A verj^ imjiortant factor in this progress is doubtless to be 

 found in the work of the Danish State Experiment Station, one branch 

 of whose work we shall briefly consider in this article. 



Systematic cooperative experiments along this line of dairying have 

 been conducted in Denmark for more than 20 years past, the first 

 experiments having been made in 1872. The late well known investi- 

 gator of dairy problems, Prof. jST. J. Fjord, was the originator and the 

 soul of the movement until his death in 1891, since which time the 

 experiments have been continued according to the same plan and in 

 all essential points in the same manner as before under the direction 

 of his successor, F. Friis, a prominent dairyman and estate owner, and 

 for many years a cooperator in Fjord's experiments. The feeding 

 experiments gradually developed into mammoth undertakings, and 

 stand to-day with hardly a parallel in any country, both as regards the 

 extensive scale on which they are carried on and the care in even 

 minutest details expended in their conduct. 



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