70 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



machinery, and she converts five dollars' worth into milk and you 

 expect it to pay for the whole thing and make a profit. Bricks 

 without straw — and she can't do it. I tell you the first great 

 principle of successful feeding is, feed all she ought to have to 

 eat. With any other machinery he knows the great successful 

 principle of running that at a profit is to run it up to its full 

 capacity. 



When I first commenced dairying I was feeding about $28 

 worth of feed a year. It took $18 just to run that machinery 

 and had an average of $40 worth of milk. There was $28 

 worth of feed, $18 went to run the machinery, which left $10 

 worth of feed to convert into milk and made $40 worth of milk. 

 There was $12 a cow a year profit. A lot of men in Michigan 

 made more, and if the other fellow was doing it, I could do it 

 too. These cows I say only gave $12 profit and that was not 

 enough. I began to study, and I came to the conclusion that if 

 I was spending $18 to run a machine and that machine was only 

 converting $12 worth of feed into milk, either I had a poor 

 machine or I was not handling it right. I commenced to study 

 how to get that machinery to do more work and came to certain 

 conclusions. The first conclusion was that the cows must be fed 

 regularly, at the same time every day. The next proposition, 

 she must be fed a variety of feed. I have been asked if that is 

 true or not. Just stop and consider the proposition. I like fresh 

 pork, but if my wife insisted on having it for three months 

 straight, I couldn't live with her. It is good enough feed, but 

 we cannot do a good day's work with but just one kind of food. 

 It may be one thing or the other. I don't believe a cow can do 

 it either. She wants a fairly good variety if she is to do her 

 best. Then she wants palatable food, and if any man was to ask 

 me this morning what was the most essential thing about feed I 

 would say payability. The stuff that tastes good to her like 

 clover cured right, cut just in bloom. I built a silo, because I 

 never yet have found any sort of roughage as good as sweet sil- 

 age. I said over in Michigan if there is a natural born stockman, 

 you can tell him when he watches his cattle eat. They like to 



