368 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



We prefer the American type because we consider tier better adapted to 

 our conditions, but there has been a constant drawing on the Island for 

 new blood for the highest degree of excellence. 



If we go onto the main land of Europe to Holland, and more par- 

 ticularly to the Netherlands, we come to the home of the Holstein, the 

 other type which predominates in this state. There we find different 

 conditions, different climate, that is more severe; we find land has been 

 redeemed by the efforts of those people from the sea, around which 

 they have thrown up dikes and a large portion of it lays several feet 

 below the sea level yet and is protected by dikes. In visiting this 

 country the first thing that strikes you is that it looks like all one farm. 

 You see no fences; then you notice the fields and farms are all separated 

 by ditches and the farms are fenced by ditches. All these ditches carry 

 off the surplus water. Those ditcheS are lined with the Dutch wind- 

 mills and we find them pumping up the water out of the ditches, lift- 

 ing it onto higher surface and carrying it on until it gets to the sea 

 shore and there it is pumped into the sea. This land is drained to-day 

 in that manner. That water lies all around it at almost surface level and 

 you have under such conditions a land that is highly productive although 

 the climate is more severe, but this land produces largely root crops. 

 It also produces grains and grasses very abundantly and the land 

 sometimes produces three and four crops in a year. The cows are 

 grazed more largely than in Jersey Island, are never staked as they 

 are on the island. They are given the best treatment the year 

 round; in the Spring and Fall when the cold winds are blowing in 

 from the sea they are blanketed when they go out to pasture. When 

 they are brought in, they are brought to a stable as clean as the dwell- 

 ing in which those people live, under the same roof as the dwelling in 

 which the people live. This stable is put in the best possible condition 

 and it is kept as clean and as wholesome as any building that we can 

 imagine, much more so than any dairy building which we see in this 



country. 



These cows have been developed for a different purpose than the 

 Jersey. The Jersey has grown up undr conditions of splendid fer- 

 tility and food very rich and nutritious. The Holstein has had a more 

 luxuriant growth of vegetation but coarser, consequently a different 

 type has been developed. The Holstein cows are larger and seem 

 capable of consuming, digesting and assimilating a larger amount of 

 feed and give a larger flow of milk, but the quality of the milk partakes 

 largely of the quality of the feed, and so it does everywhere. We have 

 studied over this and have arrived at the conclusion that within a 

 generation or two the quality of the feed does not affect the quality of 

 the milk, which is true; but when you apply that to the animal and 

 make it part of the animal's environment for generations and centuries, 

 the quality of the food has been a factor in modifying the quality of 

 the milk. So you have the conditions under which that cow was 

 developed. They do not in the Netherlands grow nearly all the feed 

 they consume or give to their animals. They grow the grasses and the 



