500 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



My experience in dairying covers a period of fifteen years with Hol- 

 steins, their grades, natives and grade Short-Horns. During this time I have 

 kept many monthly milk records of cows for a year, not with a view to 

 publication, however. I have also made many periodic tests of their butter 

 fat capacity. During these years I have retained cows that were abso- 

 lutely unprofitable for dairy purposes. Eastern buyers nearly always shun 

 the ideal dairy cow, one of mean outline and carrying a limited amount 

 of flesh. Almost invariably they would select the beef type of Holstein. 

 This shows conclusively that their purchasers have demanded of them 

 what they demanded of me. Many purchasers reason by their many fail- 

 ures in selection that it would be wise to select a fleshy carcass which 

 could be disposed of in a year in case of marked inferiority than to select 

 "raw boned cows." The purchasers may have made and lost money by 

 this procedure, but in my opinion they would have made more and lost 

 less by more judicious selection. Here and there throughout the states 

 reformation in selection and feeding is going on and only the wide awake 

 up-to-date feeders and readers are making money. During my experience 

 I had one cow that gave upwards of 12,000, two or three 10,000 pounds of 

 milk in a year. I sold one to a patron of the creamery. He said she 

 gave 10,000 pounds. This man after listening to Prof. Haecker's talk in our 

 vicinity became so convinced of the errors of his way that he began testing 

 and feeding balanced rations and rejecting worthless cows. Speaking 

 approximately, he quadrupled his cream checks in less than a year, from 

 the same number of cows. 



The statement of the writer fifteen years ago that a three-year-old 

 heifer had given sixty pounds of milk in twenty-four hours created wide 

 local comment. It was pronounced an advertisement, untrue and impossible. 

 The following year I took the same cow to the village and invited those 

 interested to see her milked. She gave an average of seventy-eight pounds 

 of milk per day for seven days and for forty-eight hours she gave six 

 pounds four ounces unsalted butter. I have a record of some twenty 

 visitors on my book. The widespread unbelief then existing has not 

 entirely disappeared. It is, however, disappearing among the better class 

 of dairymen. This cow was fed thirty pounds of ground feed per day, con- 

 sisting of corn, oats and bran mixed in the ratio of two bushels of oats to 

 one of corn and fifty pounds of bran. She weighed 1,300 imported as 

 a yearling, was a long bodied, wedge shaped cow, a hearty eater; she 

 had long, large, irregular milk veins. She carried little flesh. Her feed 

 you will see was mixed in the ratio of one to six and two-tenths. 



There has been slow but sure progress in ideas as to what constitutes 

 a good cow since 1875. In 118 tests of two leading breeds at che various 

 United States fairs, extending from 1886 to 1897, and covering a period of 

 from one to seven days, the average daily butter fat record was 1.82 pounds, 

 or butter record of two pounds two ounces. These tests were honestly 

 made under widely varying conditions and with cows of different ages, 

 but usually they were in the early days of a lactation period. During these 

 twenty-five year the breeders and feeders of beef types of cattle have 

 rarely or ever I think exhibited for competitive milk tests the beef type cow. 

 They have rarely or never shown photographs or wood cuts of cows with 



