DAIRYING. 51 



of his cows on testing days. Such records are sometimes taken by 

 a boy who is too young to milk, but capable of doing the extra work 

 required at milking time on testing days. At one farm this work 

 has been done by the women. 



ACCURACY OF THE RECORDS. 



131. The accuracy of such records as these is necessarily 

 influenced by the conditions common to nearly all farms. Milk- 

 ing is usually clone with more or less haste, especially at the 

 planting, haying or harvesting seasons. The milkers as a 

 rule are not accustomed to the use of scales and often consider a 

 weight within one pound of the true figure "near enough." They 

 do not understand the necessity of promptness in sampling milk 

 after it has been poured from one pail to another before the cream 

 has begun to separate. In spite of these and other disturbing fac- 

 tors, results have shown that tests of dairy cows can be made by 

 the farmers themselves with sufficient accuracy to give a very satis- 

 factory knowledge of the performance of each cow. 



131. From the results obtained every week or two weeks, the 

 total annual production of a cow is found by multiplying the average 

 of weights representing the milk production of one day by 4he num- 

 ber of days in the month and adding the figures for each month. 



132. The money value of each cow's milk for the month may be 

 found by multiplying the monthly weight of butter fat by the mar- 

 ket price of butter for that month if the farmer wishes to know 

 the creamery value of each cow's milk. This does not take into 

 account the so-called "overrun," which is the increase in butter 

 over the butter fat, because the cost of making the butter is an item 

 that should be taken into consideration and it may be assumed that 

 this is offset by the overrun. If one wishes to calculate the produc- 

 tion of a cow to butter, it may be readily done by adding one-sixth 

 to tfee weight of butter fat. 



The figures obtained by such records for one cow are given in 

 the following table : 



