70 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Professor Wing. No, I would not give up the dairy cow 

 in any part of northeastern United States. You can't make 

 digestible human food any more economically from any do- 

 mestic animal than you can from the dairy cow. Now, if the 

 labor bill does not get so high as to preclude dairying, she is 

 going to be the predominant animal in all of this thickly 

 settled country. If we do produce more beef, all the indications 

 that I can discover point to the fact that increase in meat 

 production will only be a supplement to dairy production. I 

 don't believe you are going to keep less cows, but you are 

 going to keep, perhaps, more beef animals. I don't believe 

 that dairying is going to be a less important part of your 

 industries is, perhaps, a better way to put it. 



Mr. Russell. Do I understand that you are advocating 

 the dual-purpose cow? 



Professor Wing. Yes, I am advocating the dual-purpose 

 cow. That is heresy. I may be drawn and quartered for 

 doing it, but the time has passed when we can keep a cow in 

 the west solely for her calf, and the time has passed in the 

 east when we can keep a cow and totally ignore the value of 

 her carcass, or her son's carcass. 



Mr. Russell. That is, you believe that milk at 4 cents a 

 quart is better sold than fed to a calf for beef? 



Professor Wing. Probably, yes. 



Mr. Wheeler. I don't think Professor Wing quite under- 

 stood my idea; that is, not to do away with dairy cows at all, 

 but to utilize an enormous amount of land in the hill towns of 

 Massachusetts where the transportation problem practically 

 makes dairying impossible. Don't you think it is more profit- 

 able to keep beef animals in those sections than it is to attempt 

 to do dairying in those sections? 



Professor Wing. Very likely. But that will mean, in the 

 first place, that those areas will have to be better farmed than 

 they are now; that is to say, we have got to stimulate the 

 growth of grass. At first in these hill towns on this rough 

 pasturage you should try sheep, and very likely you would 

 find after the sheep had cleaned these areas up the grasses 

 would come in, the land would get a little more fertility, and 

 then it would support beef. But it seems to me there is 



