448 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



say, gentlemen, that is not the right way to do. You ought to see that 

 they all eat and stay with them awhile for they enjoy good company and 

 will soon try to see which can get the closest to you and will want you 

 to rub them. Of course, it will take some time to put the grain in the 

 feeder, but not half the time it takes to go after the cows every morning 

 and evening to get them up to milk, for if there is anything pleasing to 

 the eye, or healthy for the stomach, it is to grab an old milk pail 

 twice a day for seven days in a week, for it has got to be done at a cer- 

 tain time or the old cow will not give down her milk. Oh, it is pleasant 

 to sit down to an old cow and have her lash you in the face with her 

 old tail when you are all wet with sweat, for if there is anything that 

 will make a person hot it is to sit down to milk a cow when she is warm, 

 especially a hot sultry morning when the flies are bad; "Oh, it is a pleas- 

 ant job!" Is it any wonder that there are so many of our farmers' sons 

 and daughters leaving the farm to seek other employment? Admitting, 

 gentlemen, that they are equal from a financial view, which would you 

 prefer, the slap of an old cow's tail 365 days in the year, or go to feed a 

 nice bunch of calves? I will take the latter in mine and those who wish 

 can do the milking. 



While prices at public sales are no criterion to go by, yet they do 

 form some basis of what stock is worth. At one sale, not very far from 

 Adair, this fall, the man had some yearling steers he had raised on skim 

 milk the year before, so this year he thought he would let his calves do 

 the milking and the result was the sucking calves sold for the most 

 money. At another sale which I was at, the last of December, the man 

 had 12 steers that were two's and I should judge by their looks that some 

 of them were two then, and they sold for $25.80 per head; not half what 

 ours sold for the 16th of last June, but they were separator-milk calves. 

 Dairying has become quite a business of late but it has glutted the mar- 

 ket with cattle that the stockyard's men call "clothes frames" and I 

 think a very appropriate name, too. 



Gentlemen, you will have to pardon a personal illustration, for I 

 am not going to quote quotations from other men on this, but I am go- 

 ing to give you facts and figures from my own experience. The most of 

 you know we feed every winter and part of the summer. We feed calves 

 but they are whole-milk calves, for I would not attempt to feed a bunch 

 of separator milk calves if you would put them in my feed yard free of 

 charge, for I would consider half of my grain thrown away. We gener- 

 ally put two calves to a good cow and I claim she makes us more money 

 than by milking her. Our 23 head of calves at weaning time were worth 

 $325.00 ($14.00 per head), that is all we could get for them at that time. 

 The hay they consumed, — 20 tons at $6.00 per ton, $120.00; pasture until 

 the 16th of June, $25.00; corn and oats, $650.00 (1,100 bu. corn at 50c 

 and 300 bu. oats at $100.00) ; pasture for 15 cows for 7 months, $140.00 

 and for 8 extra calves $40.00, as 15 cows raised our 23 head of calves. 

 Total cost of calves, $1,275.00. The 16th day of June when calves averaged 

 14 months old they weighed 906 pounds each and brought us $1,387.00. 

 Corn and hay marketed at home worth $200.00; pork made by feeding 



