SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 623 



has decreased in quality in proportion to the increase in central plants. 

 The hand separator will in time be the blessing it was intended to be 

 and which it can be. So far, it has done the dairy industry of Iowa 

 more harm than good. The co-operative creamery is the institution 

 for the farmer to patronize; it is the institution you have built your- 

 self with your own money; its management is with you, open to your 

 investigation at any time; if properly managed and patronized by all 

 in its territory it can outdo any central plant in the minimum cost of 

 manufacture, in the quality of the butter and prices. There are today 

 in Iowa numbers of highly successful farmers' creameries to one central 

 plant and the one being doubtful. However, many changes must be 

 made in our creameries. The present way of getting cream delivered 

 to the creameries is the worst possible. It has not one good point in its 

 favor; every part of it is to the contrary from what it should be; 

 by this I refer to the custom of having cream gathered by regular 

 haulers with the twenty-gallon cans. It is wrong to have cream hauled 

 over twenty and thirty miles of road in heat and cold; it is wrong to 

 mix all sorts of cream together; it is wrong to take samples with 

 small dippers, without thoroughly mixing the cream, as is usually done; 

 *it is wrong to gather cream three times a week in summer and twice in 

 winter. Cream should be delivered daily in summer and every other 

 day in winter, and by the farmers themselves, which is practical if five 

 or six neighbors club together and take turns in hauling, bringing each 

 man's cream in separate cans. This enables the buttermaker to grade 

 the cream and if a difference of four or five cents was made between 

 the best and poorest grade it would not take long to get nothing but 

 good cream, make nothing but good butter, and get nothing but the 

 highest prices. Mistakes and dissatisfaction would be less and easily 

 adjusted at the right place and time and it would give persons engaged 

 in other lines a chance to attend to their own business, and I have 

 no doubt the centralizers could easily invest their money to better ad- 

 Tan tage. 



In conclusion, I would appeal to you to work for a higher knowledge 

 of dairying, work for better cows, co-operate in every way possible, 

 take good care of your dairy and your dairy will take good care of 

 you. 



CATTLE FEEDING. 



H. L. Leonard, Waukee, Iowa, Before Dallas County Farmers' Institute. 



There are many methods of feeding cattle, and as many different 

 ways of handling them. They should be bought from a cent to a cent 

 and a half cheaper than they should sell for after the fattening pro- 

 cess is completed. A good plan, and probably the best one, is to buy 

 cattle that will weigh one thousand pounds or better in February 'and 

 feed about a half feed of corn and all the roughness they will eat, 

 preferably clover 'hay. Feed in this manner until the grass gets good, 

 say about the fifteenth of May, and then take all the corn off and let 

 them eat grass alone as long as it is good, or until new corn is out of 



