Thirty-fourth Annual Convention, ^'^ 



CALF BREEDING. 



Prof. Hugh G. Van Pelt, Ames, Iowa. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 



It gives me pleasure to be here and address you at this meet- 

 ing, for different reasons. In the first place I always like to 

 address people that I can praise and I want to congratulate you 

 in Illinois because of the fact that you are doing things from the 

 dairy cow standpoint. You are working through your legisla- 

 ture in such a manner that you are getting appropriations and 

 means with which your experiment station can work out just 

 such things, as Professor Hayden has just told you. In the 

 second place, I want to say that I very seldom attend a dairy 

 meeting, either in Eastern states or Western states but I hear the 

 Elgin district spoken of ; it is so common that it is becoming the 

 rule to hear of your methods at other state meetings as methods 

 which are good for them to follow, and I am glad to be here to 

 learn more of your methods and to learn how you do things. 

 However, even with the methods that you do practice there are 

 undoubtedly things that can be improved upon, orve of these I am 

 told is to find some other manner for keeping up your dairy herds, 

 for producing your dairy cows. 



We must all bear in mind the fact that in the last few years 

 conditions have changed radically, conditions are always chang- 

 ing. Today you men know that you do not have the same con- 

 ditions that you had ten or fifteen years ago. About that time it 

 was that you began to practice the buying of dairy cows on the 

 market or wherever they could be found, putting them into your 

 herds and milking them for the profitable portion of one period 

 of lactation, fattening them up and selling them tor beef. Very 

 likely at that time and in the time between then and now that 

 was the most profitable and advisable thing to dc, but there is <x 

 great question at the present time whether it is the way to main- 

 tain your dairy herds, and I doubt very much if it is. If you 

 look over Professor Frazier's works you will find he has figured 

 out very carefully and accurately for you that by the use of a 

 good sire you can make an improvement on a cow's daughter of 

 $322.79 for her period of usefulness of six years. That means 



