38 



get an increased product, that is, we will get more but- 

 ter fat in 24 hours, but the increase will be due to the 

 increased quantity of milk, not to its increased richness. 

 When we pass outside of these conditions I do not be- 

 lieve any one is smart enough to tell what is going to 

 happen. 



If we change from good food to poor and insufficient 

 food a cow will certainly shrink in quantity. She may 

 give the same quality of milk or milk richer in butter 

 fat. A cow that is being actually starved will usually 

 give milk richer in butter fat than under normal con- 

 ditions, but of course the quantity of milk will be 

 small, and when a cow is changed from starvation ra- 

 tions to an abundance of excellent food there will be 

 usually at first a decrease in the quality of the milk, 

 and just what is going to happen in any individual case 

 cannot be foretold. There are individual cases in which 

 a cow on an increasingly heavy grain feed has given 

 richer .milk, and such cases are put on record and it is 

 claimed that they show that richness can be fed into 

 milk. There are plenty of other cases in which the in- 

 crease of feed has produced a large flow of milk of a 

 medium quality or even of a poorer, and this they say 

 nothing about. 



If one were to take 100 milch cows that had not 

 been receiving heavy feed and give them all good 

 liberal rations for 1^ months in the year, he would 

 probably find a small number that would show an 

 increase in the per cent, of fat in the milk. If fifty out of 

 the one hundred that gave the richest milk at the end of 

 the year, were selected and bred from, and if their 

 calves were tested in the same- way and the half which 

 gave the richest milk again were selected and so bred 

 from and selected for twenty generations, it would be 



