ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 201 



In a meeting of the Dairymen's Association of New York, a state where 

 dairying has long been) a leading branch of husbandry, Prof. Peter Collier 

 is reported as having said that if the angel of destruction would pass over 

 our herds of milch cows, with some intelligent discrimination, and sweep 

 away at a stroke three-fourths of a million or fifty per cent of them, next 

 fall the profit from our daries would be vastly increased over that of last 

 season, notwithstanding the enormous loss of about $20,000,000 worth of 

 cows. 



As proof of the correctness of this statement Professor Collier sum- 

 marizes the figures showing the average cost of the food for the dairy 

 cattle in 270 herds, with a total of 5,594 cows excluding pasturage, was 

 $31.83 per capita, and 39.3 per cent of all these cows produced average 

 earnings below $30.00, and 94.4 "of all these cows showed average annual 

 earnings below $40.00, leaving the narrow balance of $8.17 per cow, after 

 paying for their feed alone, which must pay for pasturage, for care, for 

 milking, and for manufacturing and marketing the products. 



The repairs for buildings and fences, team and implements, taxes, the 

 interest .on the capital invested, and the innumerable incidental expenses 

 with which we are all familiar, all items to be deducted from the $8.17 per 

 capita — the balance left from the average annual earnings after paying for 

 the feed alone — before any actual profit per cow can be realized by the 

 owners of 370 herds, 5,058 of native and grade cows, comprising 94.4 per 

 cent of 5,594 cows, the actual returns from which we have been consider- 

 ing. 



A report of the Dairy Commissioner of the State of New York shows 

 that 37 counties with 1,183 factories reporting — receiving milk from 407,- 

 810 cows, owned by £0,746 farmers — give an average milk yield per cow of 

 only 3,034 pounds, and the Commissioner ventures his personal opinion 

 that this is too large rather than too small an average. At an average 

 price of 85 cents per hundred pounds, this equals an average annual earn- 

 ing per cow of $25.94. Nearly three-fifths, 57.4 per cent of all these cows, in 

 37 counties, over one-fourth of all the miich cows in the State, give an 

 average annual return of only $18,17 per cow. There is no reason to 



