284 IOWA DEPAETMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



It is still harder, impossible, to estimate the per cent of butter fat. 

 All milk of the same richness does not show the same color, and even 

 the amount of cream that raises on it is not a sure indication. A small 

 quantity of high-testing milk may be worth more money than a large 

 quantity of low-testing. 



The people who know, who have practical experience on both sides of 

 this question, have come to see that guessing won't do, and that weighing 

 and testing the milk is absolutely the only way to know what a cow is 

 worth 10 the owner. 



SACRIFICE OF DAIBT HEIFEBS. 



A large proportion of Illinois dairymen are not raising their heifer 

 calves, but buying their cows. This means there is no provision for per- 

 petuating the dairy herd or the best cows in it; in a few years all the 

 good blood of the present herd will be gone. The dairyman's skill or good 

 fortune in picking out fine cows goes for nothing except as to the individ- 

 uals so selected. If the owner has paid a high price for a high-producing 

 cow he makes no provision for keeping that extra value in the herd any 

 longer than the life of the animal. There is no promising heifer coming 

 on to honor memory and emulate the record of an unusually good mother. 

 It is a sad and unnatural and very expensive custom, this disregard of 

 family connections, this race suicide of good dairy qualities. It may do 

 away with supporting poor relations, but it by no means gets rid of poor 

 and poorer cows. Think of selling for $2.50 the heifer calf of a cow 

 with a record of 405 pounds of butter fat per year! But that was the 

 practice with cow No. 1 (previously referred to) when bought by this 

 Station. The owner was simply following common custom. 



The tendency of this custom is bound to be towards poor cows. Is the 

 buyer able to picl^ out or even to find enough really good cows for his 

 purchasers? He is naturally more interested in selling cows — and in 

 selling all of them — than in supplying high-producing cows. And the 

 cows sold do not always live up to this kind of dual purpose. The dairy- 

 man wants cows for milk; the dealer wants cows to make dollars in 

 selling them again tomorrow. And the cows sold do not always live up 

 to this kind of a dual purpose. 



The cow buyer has no such natural advantages for getting good cows 

 as the dairyman has. The latter has the mother cows and knows some- 

 thing of their milk record; he has cheap feed and the necessary equip- 

 ment; calf raising ;s a part of his business. It is absurd to suppose that 

 the dairyman can buy as good cows as he can raise. A prominent dairy- 

 man of the State says of his grade herd: "The heifers we raise from our 

 best cows are better milk producers with their first calves than are the 

 average mature cows we can buy." Several of our most progressive 

 dairymen have said practically the same thing. 



When asked why they sell their heifer calves the dairymen almost 

 invariably reply that it takes too much to raise them. This question was 

 carefully investigated with forty-eight calves by the Illinois Experiment 

 Station. Twelve calves at a time were tested at four different times. It 

 was found that they could be successfully raised on 150 pounds of whole 

 milk (worth $1.50) and 400 pounds skim milk (worth $1.20); total cost, 



