90 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



dairy business about eleven years ago. He started testing in 1912. That 

 year his herd averaged 207 pounds of butterfat and it cost him $43 a 

 head to feed his cows. They turned him a profit of $22 after they had 

 paid the feed bill. That is a pretty good average. It is above what you 

 find in associations and in herds where no testing has been done. It is 

 where a man has first-class cows, selecting them by the amount of milk 

 they have been giving, that he begins to realize a profit from his 

 knowledge of the dairy business. We find from experience that 200 

 pounds is about as high as a man can get with that kind of selection. 

 At the end of 1912 this man culled from his herd all but the pure-orea 

 cows, selling 30 per cent of his cows that year, and substituting heifers 

 from his good cows, and the cow that he thought was the best cow was 

 the very first one that he sold from his herd. He sold 30 per cent of 

 his herd and the next year it averaged 252 pounds of butterfat, making 

 a profit of $52 apiece at the end of that year. Again followed the same 

 system of weeding out his poorer cows and at the end of the secona year 

 they averaged 339 pounds of butterfat, with a feed bill of $45, returning 

 a net profit of $72. At the end of the third year, following the same sys- 

 tem, they averaged 351 pounds. It cost him $52 for feed for his cows,, 

 and they returned a profit of $74 a head. You will notice that the cost 

 of maintaining a cow is more when producing larger amounts of butter- 

 fat, but that man in four years increased the production of his herd 144 

 pounds to the cow. That is, they were producing that much more in 

 1916 than they were in 1912 when he started testing. I asked that man 

 last winter how long it would have taken him to have gotten a 350 pound 

 herd without having been in the cow-testing association, and he said he 

 would never have gotten there; that he had been in the business for seven 

 years before entering the association in 1912 and that was as high as he 

 had gotten. 



We sometimes are told that pure-bred cows "eat their heads off". It 

 is true it costs more to keep a good cow than it does a poor one. It does 

 cost more, just the same as it takes more leather to make a thousand 

 pair of boots in a day than 500 pair; but the interesting thing about it is 

 that it doesn't take twice as much feed as the poor one requires. Here 

 is an example: there was an increase of $9 in the cost of feed in the 

 last year over the first, but while our Danish friend was increasing the 

 cost of feed $9 a cow, he got $52 more in net profits in return. Another 

 interesting thing about this man's record is that he is living on a rented 

 farm. 



In our association work we find records such as this man has made, 

 are common. Lots of these men are doing just as well and therefore I 

 make the statement that you can take the average herd and increase the 

 production up to 350 pounds in five years. This record makes a big dif- 

 ference in the selling price of cows. We have never had such a demand 

 for grade dairy stuff as we have right now. Hardly a week passes but 

 we have a large number of persons coming to us and asking for good stuff. 

 We have noticed this, that men are coming to Iowa for cattle and they 

 are paying more for the cow-testing association cows than any other 



