THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 61 



are advanced in dairying to a point where you make a study of 

 the individual cow. 



There are good cows and poor cows all over this country. 

 Which are the good cows and which are the poor cows is a prob- 

 lem that must be solved. In our state we are making strenuous 

 efforts to determine the good cows and eliminate the poor ones. 



In my experience I have never seen a herd but that some 

 cows in it were profitable and some were unprofitable, simply eat- 

 ing up a portion of the profits that the good cows were making. 

 In testing associations which we have organized in Iowa we find 

 many peculiar instances. Often times in one and the same herd 

 will be found two cows standing side by side, one of which when 

 her record has been kept for a year will have produced 100 pounds 

 of butter, while the other kept under identically the same condi- 

 tions, being fed by the same feeder, milked by the same milker, 

 given the same foods in amounts and quality, will have produced 

 according to the scales and Babcock test, 400 pounds of butter 

 during the same period of time. 



Let us take for granted that it costs $29 a year to feed the 

 first cow and that her butter sells for 30 cents a pound, yielding 

 a gross income for her owner of $30. Figure the net profit and 

 it is not difficult to ascertain that this cow has made for her owner 

 $1 net profit, after allowing the skim-milk, calf and fertilizing 

 ingredients of the offal to pay for the labor expended upon her. 

 In other words, the dairyman or farmer has contented himself 

 with milking a cow over 700 times for a net profit of $1. 



We, as farmers and dairymen, are prone to complain about 

 the drudgery on the dairy farm and about the scarcity and high 

 price of farm labor. Still the proprietor of a farm, one of the 

 great factories of the United States, is willing to sit under a cow 

 night and morning over 700 times a year and milk her for the 

 meager profit of $1. 



Considering her stable companion, however, that has made 

 400 pounds of butter, which when sold at 30 cents per pound, will 

 return $120, she may be fed $60 worth of feed and still return a 

 net profit of $60 for her owner. It means that this cow, making 



