FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VIII. 567 



As a class we have been slow to observe, and more so to grasp the 

 opportunities along our line. Necessity has decreed that we should make 

 use of the milk pail, from which there is no appeal. I do not mean that 

 we all have to engage exclusively in the dairy business, but that it is 

 bound to be one of the leading features of our farms. 



Why. some may ask, do we embark in the dairy business? First, 

 it does not take the ordinary person long, when he sees his neighbor 

 or neighboring localities making money from some particular branch 

 of agriculture, to fall in line. Although claiming we do not like to milk 

 cows. -Mid confronting ourselves with the argument that a person must 

 be in iove with his occupation to succeed, which, to a certain extent, is 

 true; but when we can see good money in it, an attachment springs up 

 and the love is forthcoming. On the other hand, no matter how deeply 

 we may be in love with a certain business, once take the profit from il 

 and a good share cf the love will likely go with it. 



We will admit there are some disagreeable features about dairying, 

 but we believe it has as few as any branch of farming. The cattle feeder 

 has his ins and outs, with a good sprinkling of the latter. The swine 

 man smiles when corn is low and hogs high, and frowns when the cholera 

 strikes his herds; while those engaged in raising grain for the general 

 market need more sympathy than comment. 



The rar.cern dairy cow declares a cash dividend twice each month 

 for her cream or butter, with an extra one a year for her calf, raised 

 principally on her own milk, minus the butterfat. The calf can bo 

 turned off at a fair price by the time the pigs begin to need the milk. 



While we are talking about profit, there is another point we should 

 not overlook. People decline to milk cows but will buy tankage and 

 blood meal at from forty to fifty dollars per ton, and stock foods at any- 

 where from one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars per ton, lo 

 balance their corn, where the skimmed milk would do the work as well 

 and much cheaper. 



In support of the value of good separator milk for growing pigs we 

 have as an {lUthority the repeated and thorough tests of Professor Heni-y 

 published in his hand-book entitled, "Feeds and Feeding", where with- 

 ouT any guessv/ork he finds that with corn at twenty-five cents per 

 bushel good separator milk is worth fifteen cents per hundred-weight. 

 As in the pas:c few years corn has sold for about twice the twenty-five 

 cents, we v/ill also have to double the price on skimmed milk. Nor doe^:3 

 the profit stop here, for when we take into consideration the question 

 of retainng or increasing thei fertility of our soil, which we must do, as 

 this is just as much an asset as the soil itself, the dairy cow cuts an 

 Important figure. In support of this we will quote from an addres-3 

 made before the State Dairy Association at Cedar Rapids in 1902 by no 

 less an authority than Professor Curtiss of the State College, when he 

 said: "'In selling one thousand dollars worth of wheat from an Iowa 

 farm at present prices we sell with it about three hundred and fifty 

 dollars worth of fertility; in selling one thousand dollars worth of corn 

 we sell about two hundred and fifty dollars worth of fertility, or con 



