!)fi IOWA DhJa'AilTMEXT OF AGRICULTURE 



loss price and on our request they sent us saanples and instead (jI" te.sting 

 II it tested from ;j4 to 37 per cent, and wasn't worth the i)rice asked for it. 



Q. What especial henefit woukl it be to a t^ommunity to have one of 

 those cow-testing associations that didn't have dairy cows? That is, had 

 ordinary cows, some beef strain rather than dairy strain and yet are 

 milking ordinary cows. 



A. It depends upon what the men are doing. If they expeet to milk 

 ten or twelve cows and let calves run with the rest of them, they may as 

 well milk ten or twelve good ones. There is an advantage to it if a 

 man is interested in milking. If he is in the beef business primarily, he 

 wouldn't be interested in testing. 



Q. You have to have a scale in the barn where the milk is weighed, 

 don't you? 



A. Yes. 



Q. Isn't it possible for a man to do his own testing? 



A. Yes. In practically every community in which we organize, we find 

 a man who is doing his ow'n testing, but in the association you do that 

 only once a month and it costs only $1.50 a year for each cow. The time 

 thus put in pays you better than any other work you can do on your 

 farm. A cow that will give a large amount of milk is much better than 

 the one that will give a small amount, and it makes quite a lot of dif- 

 ference in the course of a year if you test and find out which is paying 

 you a profit. It may be that the cow giving 3% per cent butterfat is 

 giving more in a year than the cow producing 5 per cent. 



I am glad to see so much interest shown in the cow-testing association, 

 work, and I predict that in five years we will have not less than 75 cow- 

 testing associations in this state. If any of you are from communities 

 where you are considering organizing, we will be mighty glad to co- 

 operate with you. It will cost you nothing but some effort, and if you 

 have any chance of getting an exhibit of the cow-testing association at 

 youi" county fair put on properly, there will be nothing that will do more 

 for the dairying industry in your community than that, and I hope that 

 this year at the state fair we will have a chance to bring some more cows 

 together and carry this on just a step farther and show some of the 

 benefits we are deriving from our cow-testing association work. 



A TRIP TO THE ARGENTINE. 



BY DEAN C. F. CURTISS, AMES. 



We have some good neighbors south of us on the other side of the 

 equator that we don't know very much about. At the outside there are 

 a good rhany people wiio don't know just where South America is or what 

 it is. You don't realize ithat if you draw a line straight north and south 

 from New York City it would parallel the west coast of South America 

 instead of the east coast, as many imagine, and then the great extent 

 of the country is east of that line. In going down the east coast of 

 South America, particularly in times such as we have had during the 



