180 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



I therefore thought it would be best to fill the barn with 

 cows. AYe could dispose of any amount of cream in the 

 local creameries, and the cows would consume the fodder we 

 produced. I accordingly set out with my fjirm superin- 

 tendent and picked up twenty new milch cows. This 

 was in October, 1890. We saw a considerable numl)er of 

 cows in order to select the twenty, and I will leave you to 

 judge whether we got good ones, when you hear what the 

 twenty cows did. 



Question. What did you pay for them ? 



Professor Brooks. We paid on the average about fifty 

 dollars. We put those cows at once into our barn, and fed 

 them liberally. AVe had ensilage made from a variety of 

 corn that ripens, and it was very full of grain. AVe gave 

 about thirty or forty pounds of this a day, and in addition 

 to that gave some corn stover during part of the winter, and 

 as much hay as the cattle would eat, with mixed grain, con- 

 sisting of bran and cotton seed, the greater part of the time. 

 The daily gross cost of the feed was about eighteen cents per 

 animal, but after deducting the manurial value of the food, 

 as Dr. Goessmann would estimate it, the net cost of feeding 

 those cows was not more than nine or ten cents per day for 

 each cow. AA"e kept accurate records of our college herd, 

 weighing the milk after every milking, and those twenty 

 cows gave an average of a little over seven thousand pounds 

 of milk, and that notwithstanding the fact that one of them 

 was practically worthless, as she came down with foot-rot 

 within a very short time after we got her, and contributed 

 very little to the total. AVe also kept accurate records of 

 the cream produced from this milk, and the average per cow 

 gave a little over three hundred pounds of butter in the 

 year. This butter is marketed in the shape of cream in the 

 local creamery, and nnist have averaged us about eighteen 

 or twenty cents a pound, as we get all the way from three to 

 four cents a S[)ace, and it takes a little over six spaces to 

 make a pound of butter. In addition to this, which Avould 

 amount, I presume, to al)out fifteen or sixteen cents per cow 

 daily for the l^utter, we of course had the skim-milk, which 

 would be something like twenty pounds, or nine quarts, 

 which for feeding may have been worth about six cents. 



