FIFTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION 99 



milk and the daughters 8,752 pounds; the dams 349 pounds 

 of butterfat and the daughters 371 pounds. On an average 

 the daughters excelled the dams in milk production by 8.3 

 per cent and in butterfat production by 6.3 per cent. The 

 daughters of 67 sires excelled their dams in production of 

 milk, and the daughters of 72 sires excelled their dams in 

 production of butterfat. Among the hundred sires there 

 were 33 whose daughters failed to equal their dams in 

 yearly production of milk and 28 whose daughters failed to 

 equal their dams in yearly production of butterfat. Some 

 of these bulls might have increased the production of herds 

 having a lower production average; perhaps many of them 

 would have increased the production of an average herd; 

 but only the sires that raised the production of their 

 daughters above that of the dams of the daughters were 

 worthy to be in the herds in which they were used. 



Is the Proposition Bankable? 



If money used in any safe investment will earn more 

 than the interest charged, the proposition is said to be a 

 bankable one. Bankers have lent money to farmers many 

 times to help finance the purchase of purebred bulls. When 

 two bull associations were organized in a dairy district in 

 western Pennsylvania a few years ago, one of the local 

 banks helped to finance the purchase of bulls. Not a dollar 

 of these loans was lost, because the money was lent to 

 progressive farmers who invested it in a paying proposition. 



It is not easy to determine exactly how much the best 

 association bulls earn for their owners because so many fac- 

 tors must be considered, but it is very easy to show that 

 these bulls return much more than ordinary interest on the 

 money invested in them. In order to demonstrate the pos- 

 sible money value of good bulls, the records of the 6 best 

 sires of the 12 bull-association bulls mentioned above were 

 arranged in the order of the gain in butterfat production 

 of the daughters over that of the dams of the daughters. 

 The results are shown in Table 1. 



