THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 295 



Cow No. 6 returned a little more than five times as much 

 net profit in a year as No. 7. 



Number 7 was a beautiful looking cow, having an excep- 

 tionally large pendulous udder, but not very large milk veins. 



A small herd of ten cows like No. 6 will return as much 

 net profit in a year as a herd of fifty-three cows like No. 7. 



This is not all of the difference in these cows. Think of the 

 difference in the cost of building and keeping in repair a barn 

 for the ten cows and a barn for fifty-three cows, and the differ- 

 ence in the labor required to feed and milk these two herds. One 

 way for the dairyman to solve the labor problem is to sell his 

 poor cows to the butcher, and keep all good cows but less in 

 number. 



Another cow that I had considered a low producer and had 

 at one time thought of selling, produced 5,970 pounds of milk 

 containing 272 pounds fat, her milk averaging 4.55 per cent fat. 

 This cow returned $2.25 for each $1 worth of feed consumed. 



This only shows how unable we are to distinguish the poor 

 cow from the good one without using the scales and Babcock 

 test. 



At the close of the first year's test I sold three of the lowest 

 producing cows. I changed from a summer dairy to an all year 

 dairy. I began studying how to feed a cow a balanced ration. 

 I consulted with the dairy department of the University of Illi- 

 nois and received much valuable information from same. 



I sent to both Washington and Urbana for bulletins along 

 dairy lines. The increase in the production of my herd is due 

 to feeding a balanced ration, as well as to weed out the poor 

 cows and heading the herd with a pure bred sire. 



I bought two new cows that produced 298 pounds and 317 

 pounds fat respectively. 



At the close of the second year's test the herd averaged 

 7,150 pounds milk and 260 pounds fat. An increase of 1,305 

 pounds milk and 36 pounds fat per cow over the previous year. 

 Only one cow produced less than 200 pounds fat. The lowest 

 one-half of the herd produced 223 pounds of fat within one 

 pound of the average of the whole herd of the previous year — 



