118 BETTER DAIRY FARMING 



it was very bad business policy for them to sell bulls from their 

 herds at low prices. They have knocked the calves in the head 

 rather than let them go out for small sums. 



183. Purebreds create interest.— Now our ideas and the idea 

 of Mr. Van Pelt is that a farmer should certainly have a pure bred 

 bull at the head of his herd and without question the thing for him 

 to do is to have the best one that he can get and if he cannot make 

 up his mind to put real money into a bull, then let him get the best 

 one he can for the price that he can pay. If he cannot pay more 

 than $10, then get a pure bred bull from an untested dam as a new- 

 born calf for this price and be sure that the calf is registered and 

 feed him out to take the place of his scrub or grade bull. Certainly 

 it is true that if the calf is a good individual coming from a good 

 individual pure bred cow and from a good individual pure bred 

 bull, this calf will improve the herd better than a grade bull. A 

 farmer that gets interested in having a pure bred bull will never 

 go back to the use of a scrub or grade bull and the fact that he has 

 a pure bred registered male at the head of his herd will soon interest 

 him to have one or two pure bred females to mate to this bull and 

 then his interest is soon awakened to such an extent that he is 

 ambitious to have a pure bred herd. From then on, the improve- 

 ment in his herd will be rapid. 



Many breeders even when operating on an extensive scale 

 cannot test all of their animals and there are many small breeders 

 who can not afford to test at all, even though their herds may be 

 all pure bred. Yet the animals that are not tested in the larger 

 herds and the animals that are not tested in the small herds may be 

 of very strong blood lines and the bulls from untested dams in 

 these herds may be as prepotent and as powerful in bringing about 

 increased production as bulls from tested dams. 



184. Bull all-important. — Therefore, each breeder of grade 

 cattle should secure the help of his agricultural college or that of a 

 neighbor who is a purebred breeder, to find some breeder that has 

 bulls from untested dams that he will sell cheaply. Then he should 

 buy one of these bulls for his use until such time as he can afford 

 to get the bull he wants from a tested dam. 



