THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 69 



it at all. They never gave her a good chance. Over in Michigan 

 there is many a good man, well-meaning man, takes up his Bible 

 and read the story of that man Pharoah who set the children of 

 Israel the task of making bricks without straw, they had to gather 

 stubble where they could and their tasks were not lightened. 

 And they wonder at the injustice of it all, yet these same men 

 will turn around and expect their cows to give milk without the 

 proper kind of food and care, and do the same thing Pharoah 

 did, but the cows can't do it either. You got to feed them and 

 feed them the right sort and take good care of them, if you ex- 

 pect them to do their work, and they do it gladly if you do your 

 part. 



We hear a great deal aboutabalance ration and it is all right. 

 I want to tell you the first great fundamental principle is to feed 

 all she ought to have. Over in Michigan, dairying is not as 

 profitable as it ought to be. There is an average of 145 pounds 

 of butter per cow, and your average in Illinois is right there 145 

 or 146. And they say to me "You claim that dairying is profit- 

 able, but how do you make it out with 144 or 145 pounds per 

 cow per year." I says "that is all right, but my friend how much 

 does the average cow get to eat?" Statisticians have figured in re- 

 gard to that, and we found that we feed from 25 to 28 dollars, 

 the value of the feed that the average Michigan cow gets. I 

 have been over and across this state and looked at your cows, 

 and from the appearance of a lot of them I should infer your 

 average cow in Illinois probably did not get over 25 to 28 dollars 

 either. What are you expecting? Expecting her to make bricks 

 without straw. Why? Because it requires for the average cow 

 from 18 to 20 dollars' worth of feed just to keep her a cow, that 

 is if you furnish her good pasture, charge her what it is worth, 

 hay at the market price, all the feed she eats. If you start out 

 the first day of January with a dry cow and until the first day of 

 the next January, it will cost you some eighteen or twenty dollars 

 to do it. But we want them to give milk. It takes $18 to $20 to 

 run the machinery, a maintenance ration. If you feed $25 worth 

 of feed and it takes twenty dollars' worth of that to run her 



