32 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the Agricultural College to learn how to select a dairy cow. It was a 

 pleasure for me to come here and look over the College herd. When 

 Professor Smith had it in charge it was certainly worth any dairyman's 

 time to inspect the herd frequently. Since that time several changes 

 have been made in the management, and this has always resulted in 

 a change in the policy regarding the breeding and care of the herd. 

 It cannot be expected that a herd will be improved and bred up under 

 such changing conditions. I believe that now we have a man in charge 

 who has intelligence and ability to place the herd in a position where 

 it can do the dairyman in Michigan a great amount of good. Let us as 

 dairymen stand by Professor Shaw and render him every assistance 

 in our power and thus help to build up this great and growing indus- 

 try in our State. 



The State Board of Agriculture should be impressed with the im- 

 portance of permanency, so far as the persons who have in charge the 

 various departments of the College are concerned, and they should 

 not allow other institutions, by offering a large salary, to take away 

 the members of the faculty just as they are getting a good hold upon 

 the work of their departments and are able to be of some assistance 

 to the farmers of the State. If increased means are required for 

 doing this we should demand of the members of the legislature that 

 they appropriate enough money to maintain the different departments 

 of the College and furnish them with funds to properly supply them 

 with the working material they need. Especially should we demand 

 this for one of the most important, the dairy. 



SOME DAIRY ECONOMIES. 



BY C. D. SMITH, DIRECTOR MICHIGAN EXPERIMENT STATION. 



I shall not waste your time and insult your intelligence by trying 

 in this brief paper to review the whole field of milk production with 

 the expectation of calling attention here and there to minor points 

 in which better financial returns might be expected from the adop- 

 tion of more economical methods. At this late day, after all the 

 good work done by the stations, the newspapers and the farmers, it 

 is safe to assume at the outset that all dairymen agree to the prop- 

 osition that none but cows adapted to the dairy should be kept in it, 

 whether Jerseys, Guernseys, Holsteins, or Shorthorns; they must all 

 come up to the standard in the matter of large production and rich- 

 ness of milk. It is agreed also that the dairy form does indicate 

 something tentatively as to the capability of the cow along this line 

 and that the Babcock test must be used with the indications of the 

 eye and hand to select the members of the permanent herd; that 

 calves do not always, perhaps not generally, show the dairy form in 

 all its intensity until after the birth of the first calf and that therefore 

 the selection of calves to raise should be based on the excellence 

 of the dam and the dam of the sire and the pedigree generally, rather 

 than conformity to some arbitrary standard whether set up by some 

 coterie of breeders or imagined by the farmer himself. 



