50 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN"S ASSOCIATION. 



While I am saying nothing in regard to the form of the 

 dairy cow which an energetic and progressive dairyman will 

 keep, I may say that the Babcock test and the scales must be the 

 ultimate jury which decide the fate of each member of the herd. 

 Again referring to our own practice I may say that it paid us in 

 dollars and cents to weigh the milk of each cow night and morn- 

 ing and to make a record of such weights on the milk sheet. The 

 testing need not be done so frequently, the only point being that 

 whenever a test is made it shall be a composite sample from sev- 

 eral milkings and not the test of a portion of a single milking. 

 When the scales and test show that a cow is not up to the require- 

 ments that animal should be ruthlessly destroyed. 



After the cow comes the feed. Here much might be said 

 did not other papers on the program discuss the matter at con- 

 siderable length. In Michigan we make up tne bulk of the 

 ration of clover hay and corn silage, finding the clover vastly 

 superior to timothy and silage cheaper than roots. Some succu- 

 lent feed we insist upon and choose silage in preference to roots 

 because of cheapness. The variety of corn to be used is decided 

 by the date of ripening and the abundance of its foliage and ears. 

 By carefully selecting the seed before the crop is harvested we 

 are able to maintain the fertility of our variety and strains se- 

 lected so that we have to make no changes in seed from one 

 year to another. We avoid the hurtful influence of bad autumns 

 by harvesting and selecting enough good seed on a warm dry 

 autumn to last for several years. Experiments at the college 

 have shown that two year old seed harvested in a dry warm fall 

 gives much better yields than one year old seed selected in a bad 

 fall. So the rule among the Illinois farmers may well be to 

 always keep enough seed corn on hand to last for three years. 



In Michigan we have corn following clover, hauling the 

 manure from the stable as fast as it is made and spreading on 

 the clover sod to be plowed under in the spring. It is well known 

 that clover belongs to the class of plants that derive part of their 

 nitrogen from the air. How much nitrogen they will obtain is 

 not appreciated. In one case we set aside a small plot some 



