400 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



In order to bring this about I believe the creameries should provide 

 hauling facilities by which they can control the time you can keep cream 

 on your farm. There are other factors that come in for consideration. You 

 buttermakers must have proper methods in your creameries. You must 

 have sanitary conditions. You must have modern methods. The creamery 

 is not relieved of its responsibility. In fact, of late we have been call- 

 ing on the creamery to solve this problem of quality and they can do it, 

 but they never will solve it until the raw material comes to them in the 

 proper condition. To bring this about the creamery should be able to say 

 to the man that produces good milk or cream, "I will give you two, three or 

 four cents premium," and to the one who delivers an unclean, sour product, 

 "I will have to pay you two, three or four cents less." 



There has been a movement started in your state that is highly com- 

 mendable, ft is a combination of some certain creameries for the em- 

 ployment of skilled help to visit and work with the members of these dif- 

 ferent, creameries and overcome these difficulties. I believe that we will 

 find out that there are many creameries losing as much as from $1,000 to 

 $3,000 annually from this very cause and that the members will employ 

 the services of a man capable to overcome these problems, if the com- 

 munity is desirous of overcoming it. In addition to this work, our de- 

 partment in co-operation with your state department and your dairy 

 school have taken one individual creamery and put a man at that cream- 

 ery to see whether or not it is possible to go out among the farmers 

 and help them to overcome the things that are now making their goods 

 sell for less than it should be worth. We believe it can be done. We 

 want to know what it will cost to do it, and we are trying to find out. 



You have about 50 per cent of your dairymen who are keeping cows 

 that are not sufficiently good to warrant their keep, and there are thou- 

 sands of dairymen in this and other states who are milking cows that 

 are not paying them one red cent. No man can afford to stay in the 

 dairy business with cattle that will not produce 300 pounds of butter fat 

 a year. If you haven't that kind you ought to get them or get out of the 

 business, as it is only a question of ti'me when conditions in the United 

 States are going to be such as to absolutely force you out. When I find a 

 man that has animals producing 150 1 , 175 or 200 pounds I want to help 

 him a little. I just want to show him a few of his own figures. I want 

 to show him how much feed that one of his animals will consume. 1 

 want to show him about what he will get in return. Furthermore, there 

 is the man we have to either convert or destroy as a dairyman. We have 

 to do one of the two because he is a man who will sell to the creamery 

 anything the creamery will buy. I have known personally a number of 

 that class and to save my soul I can't understand how these men will stay 

 in the dairy business and milk cows that give 150 pounds of fat a year. 

 We have got to handle that man. If we can get him on his own ground; 

 if we can go on his own farm and get some of the figures from his own 

 animals so we can tell him how much feed the animals eat, what it costs 

 to feed them and exactly what he gets out of them I believe we can con- 

 vert him, and that is the kind of work this department is interested in, 



