ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VIII 439 



COW DEMONSTRATION LECTURE. 



PBOF. Ill'lill G. VAX PELT, WATERLOO, IOWA. 



Ladies and Gentlemen. — I am pleased with the honor of speaking to you 

 this evening and I am glad of the opportunity of demonstrating the essen- 

 tial points to be observed in selecting dairy cows, using as an example 

 Bosiana Ann. This Jersey cow, owned by C. I. Hudson, of East Norwich, 

 L. I., has not only won first prize and championship honors at every state 

 fair and dairy show wherever she has contested but I am informed by 

 her owner that this year she has produced over 104 pounds of butter in a 

 single month. In accomplishing these results she has demonstrated that 

 show yard points and great production are compatible. 



Here in Iowa, like in other states, we need just such cows as this. We 

 need their sons and their grandsons sired by equally typical bulls to in- 

 crease the annual production of the cows so generally being milked on the 

 farm. The improvement will not come as a result of milking more cows 

 but will follow the milking of better cows cared for with more improved 

 methods. 



That great improvement is necessary is illustrated by the fact that in 

 this state where we are milking 1,500,000 cows we have thousands that 

 are producing 300 pounds of butter in a year, hundreds that are yielding 

 400 pounds, scores of them that are producing 500 pounds, dozens of them 

 600 pounds and many individual cows that are producing from 600 to over 

 1,000 pounds. In view of this and the fact that the average is only 140 

 pounds you can readily see that there are a tremendous number of cows 

 producing less than 140 pounds of butter annually. 



This really is the situation and I want to say to you that I believe it 

 occurs in your district as well as in others, unless you are advanced in 

 dairying to a point where you make a study of the individual cow. 



There are good cows and poor cows all over this country. Which are 

 the good cows and which are the poor cows is a problem that must be 

 solved. In our state we are making strenuous efforts to determine the 

 good cows and eliminate the poor ones. 



In my experience I have never seen a herd but that some cows in it 

 were profitable and some were unprofitable, simply eating up a portion of 

 the profits that the good cows were making. In testing associations which 

 we have organized in Iowa we find many peculiar instances. Often times 

 in one and the same herd will be found two cows standing side by side, 

 one of which when her record has been kept for a year will have produced 

 100 pounds of butter, while the other kept under identically the same 

 conditions, being fed by the same feeder, milked by the same milker, 

 given the same foods in amounts and quality will have produced according 

 to the scales and Babcock test 400 pounds of butter during the same period 

 of time. 



Let us take for granted that it costs $29 a year to feed the first cow 

 and that her butter sells for 30 cents a pound, yielding a gross income for 

 her owner of $30. Figure the net profit and it is not difficult to ascertain 

 that this cow has made for her owner $1 net profit, after allowing the 



