1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 239 



Mr. Bachelder. I reckon the pasturage at six dollars. 

 That is about what it is worth there. Then I reckon one 

 dollar on each cow for the interest and taxes I do not know 

 as that would be perfectly correct, but it is as I estimated it. 



Mr. Ware. Would it not be about six or seven dollars 

 really that ought to be charged to the account for the use of 

 the cow for one yenY ? Have you allowed anything for the 

 depreciation of the cow ? 



Mr. Bachelder. I purchase my cows, and I am usually 

 able to get as much for them when I get through as when I 

 bought them. Sometimes they depreciate ; but it is seldom 

 that I have a cow but what I get as much for her at the end 

 of the period as I gave, and for that reason I made no ac- 

 count of the matter. 



Mr. Sessions. Your cows cost you about $50 apiece on 

 the average ? 



Mr. Bachelder. About $50 dollars apiece. The ques- 

 tion was asked what I get for butter. I have been able to 

 sell the butter for the last year for no fancy price. I have 

 been able to sell it for no more than any farmer in the State 

 of New Hampshire or Massachusetts can get for butter of the 

 same quality. I have been able to get an average for the 

 year of twenty-eight cents per pound. In the manufacture 

 of the butter I have practiced a little system of co-operation, 

 which it seems to m© can be practiced to advantage in other 

 sections of the State, and perhaps in Massachusetts. Now, 

 we are situated ten miles from a creamery. If we were 

 near a creamery, I should probably put the cream in there, 

 and have it manufactured by the butter-maker, and save the 

 work of manufacturing ; but we are so far away that we have 

 to do another way. My practice is this : I sent my man to 

 a practical butter-maker, and let him learn what he could of 

 the business in a short time ; and he came home and went to 

 making the butter, and he has not only made the butter 

 from my twenty cows, but he has made the butter for a 

 neighboring farmer who has twenty more, so that I am 

 running a co-operative creamery on a small scale now. I 

 pay the farmer for his cream what the creamery would pay 

 him. He gets the price for his cream that he would get 

 from the creamery, almost at his own door, and I have been 



