No. 4.] DAIRYING. 49 



situation, and thej began to weed out their poor cows and 

 reduce the number of animals. They have kept records ; 

 in fact, they are required to keep records; they are re- 

 quired to do their dairy work on a business basis. If they 

 find an animal unprofitable, why, it is dangerous even to 

 breed from her. Do you know, the great trouble in breed- 

 ing lies in perpetuating the unprofitable animal ? In Switzer- 

 land they take sires and try them out, to determine which 

 one has the greatest prepotency and which one vlelivers 

 the best calves. We as individuals can't do that, but as a 

 co-operative affair in connection with these cow-testing as- 

 sociations we can do it. It is all very simple, if yon have 

 the records, to see which is the best sire. Another point ; 

 they don't sell these sires when they are seven years old. 

 A sire is just at his finest when he is seven years old, and 

 it takes about seven years to try him out. They use these old 

 sires and they keep them just as long as they can. And 

 we have got to do something like that, too; we have got to 

 make a start in these cow-testing associations, and when a 

 cow-testing association is started it is a very simple matter 

 to regulate the breeding problem, because we have the 

 records of the individnals. But in this country we feel like 

 this : " I don't want anybody to know my business, and I 

 don't want to know about the other man's business." In 

 Ohio we started a couple of cow-testing associations and they 

 went to pieces simply on account of jealousy. This spirit 

 must be eliminated. JSTow as to this delivery proposition. 

 We now have too expensive a system in delivering our prod- 

 ucts. I am glad that we have just broken the ice and have 

 got the parcel post, but I am sure that within a few years we 

 ought to widen the scope of this work ; we ought to get to- 

 gether and fight out these problems. There are a lot of draw- 

 backs that handicap ns constantly which we ought to meet 

 as they have been met in other countries. 



Mr. John C. Oecutt. Mr. Chairman, I would like to 

 ask the gentleman who just spoke this question. If he had 

 a dairy of about 25 or 30 cows, and 15 or 16 head of young 

 cattle that came from these cows, and he found out by keep- 

 ing- records for three or four months that there wasn't a cow 



