January, 1938] Dairy Herd Replacements 9 



Tliere was an excess of 66 heifers or 11.9 per cent of the nnraber re- 

 quired for maintenance on the 54 retail farms. Wholesale milk farms 

 lacked 91 of having enough heifers to replace all the cows disposed of 

 during the year. The five farmers who made butter had sold only four 

 cows and had 30 heifers on hand at the end of the year, three times the 

 10 required based on the average freshening age of 30 months. 



Replacement Practices 



Virtually sixty-three per cent of the cows on hand April 30, 1933, were 

 raised on the respective farms where inventoried. Only six of the 200 

 farmers had adopted the practice of purchasing all replacements. All 

 others were raising one or more heifers, and 45 stated that they were 

 raising heifers beyond replacement needs or in other words as an in- 

 come-producing enterprise in addition to that of milk production. Six- 

 ty-six farmers or 33 per cent stated that they were raising proportion- 

 ately more heifers than formerly, and five that they were planning to 

 raise more of their replacements in the future. 



Raising Heifers. There were 60.1 heifers for each 100 cows owned, 

 or virtually three heifers for each five cows. It is an apparent fact 

 that raising dairy herd replacements is quite generally practiced in 

 southern New Hampshire, irrespective of some factors such as type of 

 business, location, amount of pasture and distance from hard road, which 

 might conceivably be of importance in otherwise effecting a better bal- 

 anced farm business. Although these factors show some relation to 

 the number of heifers per 100 cows, and to the per cent of cows raised, 

 the dependence is not significant and is commonly inconsistent. 



Why Farmers Raise Replacements. Each farmer was required to 

 state just why he raised his replacements instead of buying them. In 

 virtually every case, the farmer stated that, under current cow prices, 

 he thought it was at least as cheap to buy a cow as to raise one, and then 

 gave one oi' more of three reasons why he preferred to raise his own re- 

 placements. The first and the one most frequently mentioned was that 

 the expense was less noticeable ; by raising heifers the feed was mainly 

 home-grown and the grain could be purchased in small amounts, where- 

 as, if it were necessary to buy a cow, the money was not always at hand 

 and the purchase was too frequently postponed, thus reducing current 

 income. 



A second reason was that they knew what they were getting ; in many 

 instances purchased cows did not possess qualities commensurate with 

 tlie price paid. By raising heifers there was a greater opportunity to 

 build up a good herd as a result of a breeding program. 



Thirdly, farmers quite generally agreed that disease was less likely 

 when replacements were raised. Many felt from the results of the tu- 

 berculin test, that this disease was introduced into the herd by cows 

 purchased from other herds. Other diseases frequently mentioned 

 were contagious abortion and mastitis. 



Practices and Feed Costs. No attempt was made in this survey to 

 obtain the total costs of raising heifers. However, careful considera- 

 tion was given to feed costs exclusive of pasture, and to the practices 



