THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 161 



are not getting the profits they should get for the investment of 

 time and money spent in the business of milk production. There 

 are several reasons for these poor results so frequently obtain- 

 ed. One is inefficient cows ; another great waste is in raising 

 crops that do not yield anything like the maximum amount of 

 digestible nutrients per acre that is possible to obtain. This is 

 especially true in regard to the protein contained in the crops 

 commonly raised on the dairy farm and so essential in the ra- 

 tion for dairy cows. In many sections of the United States corn 

 should form the basis of the ration, and the other portion should 

 consist of some crop that is best adapted to balance the corn.. 

 For example, an acre of timothy hay does not contain more 

 than one-tenth as much digestible protein as an acre of alfalfa 

 hay. Notwithstanding this fact, timothy hay is extensively 

 grown on many dairy farms and fed to dairy cows. 



Condition Found in Dairy Sections. 



A few examples may help to bring out the conditions ex- 

 isting on some farms in the dairy sections of Illinois. Not long 

 since, the speaker visited a large dairy farm in the Elgin dis- 

 trict, where the tenant had been on the farm for fourteen years 

 without sewing clover or other legume seed during this time, 

 thus showing the same defect as system No. i. Just across the 

 road was a large dairy farm on which ten acres of clover were 

 grown. In March this man still had the clover hay in his barn 

 and was inquiring for a market where he might dispose of it, 

 as he said he had so much corn stover he could not feed it out 

 before time to turn the cows to pasture. He made a gross mis- 

 take in not feding this legume hay, which would have taken the 

 place of much of the high-priced bran, which he had been buying 

 in large quantities all winter in an attempt to balance the ration 

 for his dairy herd. 



Since there are many dairy farms in Illinois that approach 

 these conditions, where the farmers attempt to go into dairying 

 by simply putting cows on the farm without changing the crops 

 raised, and continue indefinitely without attempting to adapt the 



