FIFTY-FIRST ANNUAL CONVENTION 21 



ago that the farmers did not want cow testing associations. 

 I told him that they probably did not realize the advan- 

 tages. He said he thought he could get them interested. 

 He went from one to another, asking them what their cows 

 were doing, what their milk was bringing, what their feed 

 costs were and pointing out the advantages of keeping rec- 

 ords of their cows. And today he has got ten associations 

 and more than two hundred men keeping records. Ten 

 associations in one county! And what are they doing? 

 They weed out more than ten per cent of the cows on test 

 and their milk last year cost them less than $1.00 per hun- 

 dred. They were getting something like $2.00, $2.65 and 

 up to $3.00 per hundred in the early part of the winter. 

 That includes just the feed cost alone. 



We have not begun to think about the cow testing asso- 

 ciation in the right way as yet. What we want is records. 

 I saw the Scotch milking cows and they can show us a lot of 

 things. However, I do not believe we can go over to Den- 

 mark and those other countries and apply their methods 

 here. You can set the whole country down right here in 

 one of our States. 



I saw the records of 36,000 cows in Scotland. One cow 

 in particular averaged over a forty-week period 7,500 

 pounds of milk in a year. She did it on grass and grass 

 alone. They do not keep cows that are not profitable. They 

 have got to make their living out of it and they have got 

 the business down to its fine points. 



I can give you dozens of instances in Michigan of men 

 who have tried out various schemes for the past year, partic- 

 ularly the small breeder who never hopes to have a national 

 reputation as a breeder. I can give you those men's names 

 and they will tell you they have gotten more out of a cow 

 testing association than they did out of any other plan. 



From my observations, I would lay a greater part of 

 the emphasis on the man who made the testing record than 

 the record itself. And I want to say that we have less 

 trouble with people trying to put something over in cow 

 testing association work than in advance registration work. 

 If a fellow gets a shady reputation and. he comes out with 



