176 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



It may be well therefore to review the disadvantages attendant upon 

 the practice under consideration. 



First. It buys dear and sells cheap. Under this system the dairy- 

 man is buying dear and selling cheap, which is always a hazardous prac- 

 tice. He is lucky if he buys a fresh cow of fair quality for $40.00, and he 

 is lucky again if he sells her for more than $30.00. Common experience 

 shows that if he undertakes to realize this $10.00 again out of the same 

 cow he will simply lose in feed what he saves on the animal. Cow beef 

 goes at from 3 to 3y 3 cents and all feeders but dairymen know that gains 

 cannot be put on at that rate. But the dairyman says: "I deal in cows 

 that are heavy milkers, but that lay on flesh rapidly as they go dry, and 

 I find them profitable feeders." Then I would say that such a cow is far 

 too valuable to lose her life after but one year of usefulness; she is so rare 

 a specimen that she should be kept while she will live; she should be a 

 mother of others, and it should be a crime to kill her as long as she will 

 breed. Really good cows are rare — indeed too rare to be recklessly de- 

 stroyed. 



Second. It sacrifices the calves. If she be a really good cow her calf 

 should have been preserved to replace her, but by the system we are 

 discussing it has gone for veal, and. like its mother, paid early the penalty 

 of being a superior specimen of its kind. What kind of breeders are we 

 who talk much about the benefits of selection, then do our best to 

 pick out the very choicest cows and kill them and their progeny within 

 a year? 



Is it any wonder that the average cow of the United States produces 

 only 150 pounds of butter under this system of breeding backwards? 



Third. Difficulty in judging. I have been a dairyman myself and I 

 know the conceits of the profession. One of them is that a good cow can 

 be told at sight. Every dairyman has his rules for selecting good cows, 

 and we all talk glibly about how to do it; yet I firmly believe that the 

 best of judges will be deceived at least once out of five times, and if 

 . so, then the one bad purchase will cancel most of the profits of the four 

 good ones. Is there a dairyman present who can say that he has not been 



