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much value their cows produce in a year, or how much value in 

 food and labor is expended on them. 



The dairy forms one part of the farm operations, and they 

 may perhaps be able to tell at the end of the year, whether on 

 the whole they have gained anything from the farm, but they 

 cannot tell whether or not it would have paid better to have sold 

 the produce consumed by the cows and bought a quantity of ma- 

 nure equal in value to that produced by the cows. Every farmer 

 who keeps a herd of cows, or who thinks of doing it, would like to 

 know how much money return he can reasonably expect to re- 

 ceive from such a herd of cows as is practicable for him to ob- 

 tain. If our milk producers, who make this one of the means of 

 living, would take the trouble to keep an exact account for a year 

 or two of the yield of their herds, the amount received for dairy 

 products and the manner and cost of keeping, it would be of the 

 greatest value to many young farmers and not a little benefit to 

 themselves. The vast difference in the income of different cows, 

 without any perceptible difference in cost of keeping, would sur- 

 prise us, and the result of careful observation would very likely 

 show that in a herd of twenty cows a large portion do not pay 

 expenses while the remainder yield a good profit. 



It may be objected that keeping an exact account of the prod- 

 uction of each individual in a large herd, would involv^e such an 

 amount of labor as to be practically impossible. But we think 

 not. Let the milk of each cow be measured or weighed one day 

 in each week for a year, and the amount produced by each one 

 in that time could be very easily calculated. The knowledge 

 gained by trying this experiment is worth to the person trying 

 it all the trouble it costs. 



It would doubtless be found that a large proportion of cows 

 do not pay expenses. But is not the first step to pecuniary suc- 

 cess in dairy farming to ascertain how much a cow must yield to 



