64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



young man from that mountain farm compared these cows, 

 and as he later on came to be more and more acquainted 

 with the details of difference, he began to feel that the herd 

 at home was far, far from its profitable possibilities. 



There were other lessons taught at this agricultural college 

 that bore nmch on future problems to be solved. The college 

 instructor in dairying required the students to test the cows 

 of the college herd occasionally. They w^ere obliged to take 

 samples of the milk of each cow of the herd at each milking 

 for a number of days in succession, and find out how much 

 fat there was in the milk, so as to compare values. Here 

 John learned that two cows might be giving exactly the same 

 amount of milk, though that of one contained twice as much 

 butter fat as the other. As creameries paid for milk on the 

 basis of its butter fat content, he soon saw that quality as 

 well as quantity was an important consideration with milk 

 production. Thus, as he attended his daily duties about the 

 college, he came to see that success on that dairy farm was 

 dependent on several things, each important in itself. 



These were some of the things taught this young man 

 during the four years prior to his home coming, and their 

 value was never underestimated by him. Not long after his 

 return his father gave him a half interest in the farm, and 

 he settled down in a partnership full of anticipation of the 

 future. 



There were in the herd at Rockdale 16 native cows. 

 They were just common, plain, every-day scrubs. John's 

 father fancied some of them mightily, but he was not justi- 

 fied by facts in this admiration. One day the junior member 

 of the firm came home with a spring balance. Pie proposed 

 to begin weighing the daily milk yield of each cow. He 

 knew it would not take much extra time, and they would 

 learn something of what the cows were doing. The senior 

 member smiled, but thought it a harmless pastime. 



John said: "Father, we don't know enough about what 

 our cows are doing. Do you know that records show that 

 the average dairy cow m this State produces only 150 

 pounds of butter a 3'ear? There have been some might}' 

 interesting investigations made by some of our experiment 



