()() BOAlil) OF A(;R1CULTURE. [Pub. Doc„ 



began to glance over its contents. There were some pic- 

 tures in it, and these caught his eye. They represented 

 cows of different types. Tlien he began to look over the 

 contents of the bulletin. Finally he said : " John, just look 

 here. You know you have talked to me about this form 

 business with cows, but it never struck me as amounting to 

 much ; but this man Hfeckcr seems to have a pretty good bit 

 of evidence here that there is some meat in the cocoanut. 

 He has been feeding some cows out there at that Minnesota 

 station, and he kept a record of every bit of food they ate, 

 and of all the milk each cow made, and of the butter in her 

 milk. My, but that was a big job, though. Now he has 

 divided up his herd into those with dairy type and those of 

 general purpose type, and this is what he shows they have 

 done. He had 20 yearly records for each class. The dairy 

 type cows produced an average of 7,876 pounds of milk and 

 480 pounds of butter ; the general purpose type produced an 

 average of 6,035 pounds of milk and 295 pounds of butter. 

 In this book here, he says that, by valuing the skim milk at 

 15 cents per hundred, and allowing one-eighth of the milk 

 for cream, there is an excess of $2.42 in favor of the dairy 

 type cow for skim milk; and allowing 16 cents for butter, 

 the 135 pounds gain of the butter of this type gives a further 

 gain of 121.65. Adding this to the $2.42 gives a total of 

 $24.07 in favor of dairy over general purpose type. He also 

 found that the fatter the cows were, or the less belh^ they 

 had, the less money there was in them. Guess we'd better 

 look into that, John." 



As the months rolled b}', it became clear to father and son 

 that radical changes nmst be made in that herd. The cows 

 showed an average for the herd at the end of the first yea,r 

 of only 180 pounds of butter fat each, which, at 25 cents a 

 pound, yielded a gross return of $45. The feed and cost of 

 keep ran up to $40 each, so where was the profit? And the 

 scales and Babcock showed that some of the cows were 

 boarding at the expense of the \A^inslow family. It was 

 interesting, for the fact is, those robber cows lacked dairy 

 type. John discussed them with his father. There were (5 

 of them, and he showed them up in their true light. Point- 



