280 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



405 POUNDS FAT VS. 138 POU>'DS FAT. 



Cow No. 1. — Three years, 34,171 pounds milk, 1,214 pounds butter fat; 

 one year, 11,390 pounds milk, 405 pounds fat. 



Cow No. 3. — Three years, 11,491 pounds milk, 414 pounds fat; one 

 year, 3,830 pounds milk, 138 pounds fat. 



NO. 1 PRODUCES TWICE AS MUCH FROM SAME FEED. 



These cows were both cared for in the same way and given the same 

 ki.nds of feed and encouraged to eat all they could make good use of. 

 Cow No. 1 ate 1.56 times as much as cow No. 3, but produced 2.97 times 

 as much milk and 2.93 times as much butter fat. Or, reduced to a like 

 feed basis. No. 1 produced 1.88 times as much as No. 3. No. 3 got only 

 138 pounds butter fat from the same quantity of feed that No. 1 changad 

 into 259 pounds fat. The one cow is nearly twice as good a producer as 

 the other, on exactly the same feed. 



PROFIT OF $34.51 vs. LOSS OF $5.62. 



Counting butter fat at 23 cents per pound, and taking out the exact 

 cost of feed, the one cow returns a clear profit of $34.51 — and the other 

 lacks $5.62 of paying for her feed. 



FORTY cows, $1,380 PROFIT OR $500 LOSS. 



Forty such cows as No. ± would return a clear profit of $1,380.40 per 

 year, and a herd of eighty, $2,760.80. But eighty No. 3's would lose a 

 dairyman $500. 



THOUSANDS OF PROFITLESS COWS IX ILLINOIS. 



No. 3 is not alone in this losing business. The speaker knows from 

 actual testing of 800 cows in forty different herds that there must be 

 thousands of individual contrasts as great or greater than this in the 

 dairy herd of Illinois. 



The profitless cow is a real and living issue and a large one in dairy- 

 ing for bread and butter. One of the greatest and easiest steps of 

 improvement in the dairy business today is to discover and weed out 

 these poor cows. Isn't it time to stop guessing at these vital elements in 

 the profit of the dairy business and to find out for sure — by weighing and 

 testing the milk — what each individual cow is earning for the owner? 



WIDE DIFFERENCE IN DAIRY HERDS. 



We all know there is a difference in dairy herds as well as in indi- 

 vidual cows. But do we clearly understand that some Illinois herds do 

 not pay for the feed given them? That other herds pay too small a 

 margin of profit to justify the investment in money and labor? And 

 that still other herds are making their owners big money? Do dairymen 

 in general know that these differences rest on plain causes that may be 

 readily understood, and that a change from the poor herd to the highly 

 profitable herd is a comparatively easy matter, within the reach of any 

 farmer who is able to keep cows at all? 



