THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 85 



than half enough butter to go round, providing the butter was fine 

 enough and the price was within the reach of all. 



I told you of what it costs of the fertility of your soil in sell- 

 ing off your grain, but I failed to tell you, what it cost to produce 

 a ton of butter. Now according to the estimates made by agri- 

 cultural schools, who have thoroughly investigated the matter, it 

 costs but fifty cents a ton of the fertility of your soil to produce 

 it and if you care for and return the manurial value of the dairy 

 cow back to the lands again, you are increasing the fertility of 

 your soil instead of decreasing it. You can go into the dairy 

 sections of the old dairy states, and you will find this to be a fact, 

 that where they are extensively engaged in the dairy business, 

 they are raising more corn to the acre, more oats to the acre and 

 in fact more of all kinds of crops than they did ten or fifteen 

 years ago. 



Now I want to talk to you a few minutes about the dairy 

 cow. The opinion seems to be quite general in a country not 

 engaged in dairying, that it is necessary to go in to thoroughbred 

 dairy cattle. This is a mistake and one that has resulted in great 

 injury to the industry. I want to say to you, and I speak from 

 observation and experience, that in your native cow you have the 

 very best possible foundation for a dairy herd. I do not wish to 

 be understood to be arguing against thoroughbred cattle, for I 

 believe in them, and I want to say to you, that you should head 

 your herd with a thoroughbred registered sire and he, the very 

 best possible for you to obtain. I wish I could urge the impor- 

 tance of this strong enough so that the very first move you would 

 make in the line of dairying, would be to secure an animal of 

 this kind. The facts are, that you cannot afford to keep any 

 other kind of a sire and if one of you is not able to purchase an 

 animal of this kind, two or three of you should go together and 

 do so. 



You probably never had much experience with breeders of 

 thoroughbred cattle, if you have not, I want to say to you, that 

 they are the most enthusiastic set of men that ever lived and 

 when it comes to describing the merits of their respective herds, 



