ELEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XI 631 



in the United States, and if it were possible to inaugurate a system where- 

 by the average production per cow might be increased even one pound of 

 butterfat in a year, this increase would amount to 21,801,000- pounds, 

 which at the price of 30 cents a pound would be worth $6,540,300. If such 

 an increase could be brought about by better-selection of cows and feeding 

 stuffs, the sum mentioned could be figured practically as clear profit. In- 

 vestigations by experiment stations and breeding associations show that 

 there are a large number of cows which yield greatly in excess of this 

 average, some reaching an amount as high as 800- or 900 pounds of but- 

 terfat in a year — one cow even 998 pounds. This being the case, there 

 must be a large number of cows which yield less than 145 pounds of but- 

 terfat in a year. 



Many reports of cow census investigations conducted by Hoard's Dairy- 

 man have been published during the last decade. These investigations 

 have been made in representative sections of many dairy states, and show 

 an average production but very little above that reported in the twelfth 

 census. More than one-fourth of the herds reported failed to produce 

 enough milk or butterfat to pay for their feed at market prices. 



THE PRACTICAL DIFFICULTY. 



The difficulty has been to devise a system whereby the unprofitable 

 cows might be detected. It is a common belief among farmers that the 

 man who does the milking knows the best cows in the herd, as well as 

 the poorest; but numerous experiments have demonstrated clearly that 

 this belief is not warranted. Many factors enter to lead the judgment 

 astray. The cow which gi'ves a generous flow of milk during the first few 

 weeks of her period of lactation is usually regarded as the best cow. She 

 may soon go down in her flow of milk, and perhaps goes dry for four or 

 five months of the year, but this is not observed, and only the memory of 

 the large flow she gave when fresh lingers in the mind of the owner. 



Another cow may give only a fair flow of milk when she first comes in, 

 and may not be regarded highly by her owner; but she may continue at 

 the same rate of yield for a long period, and will in the end prove a great 

 deal more valuable than the other cow. No milker can tell, without 

 weighing the milk regularly, whether a cow gives 6,000 or 8,000 pounds 

 of milk in a year; still the difference may prove the difference between 

 profit and loss on that particular cow r . 



When the milk is valued according to its butterfat content unsupported 

 estimates of the cow's performance are still more uncertain. It requires 

 frequent testing to ascertain the average percentage of fat in the milk a 

 cow yields; the test may vary greatly from milking to milking and from 

 day to day. There may also be a great variation in the richness of the 

 milk yielded by a cow when she is fresh as compared with a time later 

 in the period of lactation. 



And last, but not least, different cows show different feed requirements 

 for the same production of milk or fat — a fact which is not generally 

 thought of, and it is impossible for the feeder to estimate accurately the 

 difference in cost of feeding the various cows for a year unless records of 

 the feed are kept systematically. 



