28 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



standpoint of analyzing these records with care. Maybe a 

 cow will have an off year, just like an apple tree which 

 sometimes produces more one year than another. 



We had a cow one time that made 400 pounds of butter 

 fat from 10,900 pounds of milk, freshening at a year and 

 eleven months. The next year that cow did not give enough 

 milk to wet the bottom of a pail. Everybody was disgusted 

 with her, and then she freshened with her third calf and 

 she was a wonderful producer. She brought $1700 at an 

 auction sale in Chicago. These are factors we must con- 

 sider. Use judgment and common sense! 



And that leads up to another thing: In bringing out the 

 value of the cow testing association as compared with offi- 

 cial test. Professor Reed told you things that are absolutely 

 true. We have come into a time when county agents are 

 inquiring for purbred sires to put at the head of grade 

 herds when they can afford good bulls. They insist they 

 won*t have a bull out of a cow that hasn^t made six or seven 

 hundred pounds of butter fat. There are two things which 

 they are encouraging to be done. The first thing is to try so 

 hard for big records that they put the farmer out of busi- 

 ness. And the second thing, they are encouraging the de- 

 velopment of breeds to try for such records, which also has 

 the same disastrous effect. 



I think Professor Reed has attempted to illustrate to 

 you that we should not go to extremes on these things. The 

 safe thing to be guided by in business of every sort is gen- 

 eral average. I have often made the statement, and I know 

 Mr. O'Hair will agree with me, that if a bull's mother has a 

 big enough record, I do not question the matter at all. 



Bulls transmit only that which is inherent with them. 

 They do not transmit man-made efforts ; if you are milking 

 two times a day, you can't expect that the daughters of a 

 sire whose mother was milked three times a day will show 

 the same results. 



Now, I am not disparaging the great production rec- 

 ords which are being attained. I think these records are 

 wonderful things — ^they are great in that they show the 

 wonders of the cow and what can be done with them. 



