EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PAET VII. 351 



bred as the best talent in the country can breed them, grand animals 

 they are; but I say keep those things distinct, you beef men, raise your 

 beef animals, but you dairymen, find your special purpose cow and stick 

 to her. I make bold to make this statement, although I am aware that 

 the agricultural press in this state are to a large extent opposed to it, 

 that the special purpose dairy cow, regardless of her calf, we will not 

 take her calf into consideration at all, will make you more profit, more 

 clear profit, than the combined annual production of milk or butter and 

 your steer calf for one year. I say I make bold to make this statement 

 that there is more clear profit in the production of butter and milk alone 

 from the special purpose dairy cow than there is in the combined product 

 of your milk and butter and your steer calf from your dual purpose cow. 



Now then, why go to work and spend time and money and profit taking 

 care of a whole lot of calves and yearlings up to two years old and then 

 find you could have made more money by not employing so much help 

 or doing so much work yourself to take care of those steer calves, when 

 you could have made more money taking care of the special purpose 

 cows? 



I said the agricultural press of this state was antagonistic to the special 

 purpose cow, but I want to make one exception that I know of to that. 

 There is a little paper printed down here in Waterloo; it is not very big, 

 but it contains the very essence of dairy thought. I am speaking of 

 Kimball's Dairy Farmer, and that, in combination with Hoard's Dairy- 

 man, will give a dairyman the literature he needs to build up one of the 

 special dairy herds, give him the knowledge he needs, give him the under- 

 standing he needs, and if he takes both those papers and studies them 

 carefully and goes according to the light that is given him there I will 

 guarantee that in the course of ten years he will have a herd of cows that 

 no matter how hard the times are or how high the price of labor is he 

 will come out on the right side of the ledger at the end of the year, and 

 you cannot say that of your dual purpose cow. 



I heard a statement here last year by my good friend. Dairy and 

 Food Commissioner Wright, and it seems to me he rather exulted in the 

 statement that the dairy cow of Iowa had made 140 pounds of butter on 

 the average during the year. Just think of it! If I did not make more 

 than 140 pounds of butter a year off my herd I would be in the poor house 

 after a while, because I would gradually go down and down. Do you 

 know while I am away I have hired a man to take my place doing chores, 

 and he will not milk, and I am paying that fellow $2.00 a day and his 

 board to do ordinary chores? Can we stand that kind of work with the 

 dual purpose cow? Then again, look here. If 140 pounds is the average 

 how many cows are there under that? There are a whole lot above that, 

 but how many are there under that? How many cows are you milking 

 that will not give you more than three or four thousand pounds of milk 

 a year? It does not matter whether you are selling your milk or making 

 it into butter, the amount of milk you make and the per cent of butter 

 fat in the milk determines the price of butter and the amount of milk 

 you are selling determines the profit you will get by the price you get 

 and the number of pounds of milk you get. Governor Hoard said here 

 yesterday that he made nearly eight thousand pounds of milk out of 



