SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II 93 



I think, that we had a lesson with those cows tliat was well worth the 

 while of anybody and we also had some big surprises. It is a surprising 

 thing, when you get out among the men, in organizing associations, to 

 find out how many men actually think they can tell their good cows and 

 that they don't need to test them. In organization work it is not un- 

 common for some men to tell us: "I have been milking for twenty-five 

 or thirty years and I know my good cows; I don't have to have anybody 

 come around and tell me how to do this." So we have made it a point 

 on the first trip to a new member of the association to find out which 

 cow he thinks is his best one and which he thinks is his poorest one, 

 and we have never found a man who knew them both. Many times cows 

 that seem to be best are found to be down at the end of the line after the 

 test. We had a man in Cerro Gordo county who had a cow in his herd 

 that he offered to sell for $25, because he considered she was no good. He 

 couldn't sell her because eA^erybody else thought she was as poor as he 

 thought her, but at the end of the year that cow he considered the poorest 

 made more butterfat than any other cow in his herd. He kept that cow 

 and he has several times since refused $100 for her. 



I hope that during the coming year it will be possible for us to put 

 another exhibit on here at the state fair, because I believe that it is a 

 great thing from the standpoint of the dairy business. The cow-testing 

 association is the foundation of the dairy business in Iowa and the more 

 associations we get the more good cows we are going to have. The more 

 profit we make on our cows the more we will popularize dairying. Men 

 will hear there is money in it and they will have less trouble with the 

 labor proposition. And it is now realized, in connection with the dairy 

 business, that when a man starts testing his cows, he soon knows whether 

 every cow in the herd is paying a profit, and it is a very easy matter to 

 convince him that there is something to selection of cows. When -he 

 realizes that, it is an easy matter to increase the production of a cow, 

 especially when he knows what her ancestors are doing, what he is pay- 

 ing for food, and what the pure-bred bull is doing in the herd. 



I think down in Clinton county we have one of the best examples or 

 this increased production in using common cows. We had a man who 

 had been testing for three years before he went into the association. He 

 started five years ago in the dairy business with just a herd of common 

 cows and he started with a pure-bred dairy bull. He has just one of his 

 original cows now and is milking twenty-two, all of them are grades by 

 this bull. The original cow made 345 pounds of fat. He has also four 

 daughters of this original cow in his herd and keeps a record on all of 

 them. One of them as a thi'ee-year old made 490 pounds of fat; he has 

 another one that made as a three-year old 317 pounds of fat; he has 

 another one that made 289 pounds of fat, and all of them are two or 

 three-year old records. Then he has a two-year old heifer tnat in six 

 months produced 190 pounds of butterfat, wliich would indicate that this 

 heifer will make better than 300 pounds of butlerfat during her first 

 lactation period. And there you can see the big increase in production 

 on that one cow alone, due largely, of course, to better methods in feed- 

 ing, but especially due to this pure-ln-cd bull that he used in his herd. 



