168 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



As we are located we feel satisfied it pays us best to make full cream 

 cheese. We have a demand for all the cheese we can make at one cent 

 above Chicago prices, delivered at our station. No freight or commis- 

 sion to pay since the first two years. We have tried making butter twice, 

 but we like cheese making much better. I think every dairyman should 

 raise his heifer calves from his best cows. He gets attached to thgm and 

 feeds and cares for them better it seems to me. They are more likely to 

 make good cows. 



If we expect to make dairying pay, we must go into it with that idea 

 in view — to stay by it and study it. "How you can produce the 100 pounds 

 of milk or cheese the cheapest. 



One of the most important items in dairying is that it makes a market 

 for clover hay on the farm, and no man can hardly farm successfully with- 

 out raising clover. If you have good clover hay you can make a good 

 ration with most anything fed, with corn, oats, shock corn, oats inbundte; 

 you need not buy much mill feed if y ou have plenty of clover and corn on 

 the farm. 



Cows are the best thing on a fa rm to keep up the fertility of the soul. 

 Two rotations of clover will bring the oldest worn-out land back to its best. 



With the cows in the pasture and the clover hay fed and returning the 

 manure back on the land you need not plow any clover under; just let it 

 get a good start in the spring so as to keep the ground shaded all summer 

 as much as possible, and y »u need not plow any under; the more pasture 

 and hay, and the more milk and cheese. 



Feeding steers and hogs does not compare at all with cows for keeping 

 up the fertility of the soil. Steers are usually fed in a large yard ^ or field 

 containing five to ten acres, with a drove of hogs to eat root and mix the 

 droppings up with mud, and when spring comes there is very little manure 

 to be gathered up and returned to the soil where most needed to grow a 

 crop of corn or hay. While cows are usuallly fed in the barns or stables, 

 where manure is all saved, and should be hauled out and spread as fast as 

 made, or the weather will permit, on the ground intended for corn the next 

 season, or on the meadow land to grow the next crop of hay and harrowed 

 in the spring. 



