SEVENTH A.NNrAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 613 



were of common or scrub blood, and on the same feed paid exceedingly 

 well. It is naturally supposed that the daughters of a good mother 

 should be profitable animals, especially if the sire is of good blood. The 

 .Jerseys just mentioned as belonging to this Station were in two in- 

 stances from a cow that would make nearly 400 pounds of butter a 

 year, and the sire was from very good stock. In one of the counties of 

 this State is a herd of grade Jerseys that will average very nearly 350 

 pounds of butter each year. Pedigreed Jersey bulls of good stock have 

 always been used at the head of this herd, and yet, until the bull now 

 owned on the farm was purchased, every heifer raised was found to be 

 unprofitable. This is one of the farms in the State where a complete 

 system of records is kept, and by weeding out the inferior animals, 

 the herd was made very profitable, and was kept so. 



Another chance for error in estimating the value of a cow is due 

 to the fact that individuals vary considerably in the length of the lacta- 

 tion period. The cow that will give only twenty pounds of milk a day 

 when she is fresh would be considered a rather poor cow, but if she will 

 give this amount every day for 300 days it would be a total of 6.000 

 pounds, which is an amount that not one dairy cow in twenty in this 

 State will produce, and which is a very good record, indeed. On the 

 other hand, if a cow gave forty pounds a day when she was fresh the 

 owner would naturally jump at the conclusion that she was a valuable 

 animal without reference to the length of time she might give milk. 

 The fact that a cow gives a large quantity of milk when fresh is no 

 evidence that she will give a large yearly product. Such cows fre- 

 quently commence to fall off very rapidly after the end of the first or 

 second month, and at the end of the sixth month will be dry. Where 

 this is the ease the yearly product is very likely to 'be 'below a profitable 

 limit. This Station owned such a cow. She gave a very large flow of 

 milk for the first month, and made an exceptionally good butter record 

 for the month, but she was dry at the end of six months, and her 

 yearly record, owing to this fact, showed verv poorly. She was the only 

 cow owned by the Station, and purchased from outside sources, which 

 failed to respond to our conditions and make a profitable animal. And 

 yet she was just such a cow as many dairymen would call a first-class 

 animal. On the other hand the Station owns a couple of animals that will 

 give practically as much milk the tenth month of the lactation period 

 as the first month, and while they never give a very large flow of milk, 

 the fact that they stick to it for a long time makes them v.iluable. 



But in addition to the keeping of a milk record the dairyman must 

 know the per cent of fat in the milk, as well as how much milk the 

 cow produces. Everj'one who has taken care of milk in the old-fashioned 

 way knows by the thickness of the cream that some cows give much 

 richer milk than others. The best city dairymen are adopting the 

 system of paying for the milk on the basis of the fat test, or the amount 

 of fat contained in the milk. Creameries have long bought milk on this 

 basis. The amount of butter that a certain quantity of milk will produce 

 depends entirely on the per cent of fat in the milk. Where only one 

 or two cows are kept for family use it is possible to tell about how 

 much butter a cow produces. But with a dairy of several cows, and 



