. Thirty-fourth Annual Convention. 9^ 



good cows, consequently you do not keep the heifers from your 

 poor cows but from your good ones. 



Now if you will bear in mind the lessons you got from Mr. 

 Gregg this morning about the dairy sire, place at the head of your 

 herd a good sire, produce good calves from your good cows and 

 every year you will produce a heifer which in her period of use- 

 fulness will bring you $32.79 more than her mother. After i. 

 lifetime of breeding what have you in the end ? Gentlemen, you 

 will have something far greater in the line of cows than though 

 you disposed of your heifer calves, sold them for beef or knocked 

 them in the head, and continued to buy grade cows that somebody 

 in the West wished to dispose of. We people in the West are 

 learning something, we are learning the value of a good cow. 

 We are learning too that feeding beef cattle, hogs and other farm 

 cattle is risky, to say the least. I was talking to a friend of mini* 

 that last year boasted to me he made $10,000 feeding beef cows — 

 last year was an exceptional year. I met him again before 

 Christmas this year and I asked him how he was getting along 

 and he said, "I have lost $6,000 of the $10,000 I made last year, 

 and I have enough cattle so if the price does not change I will 

 lose $6,000 more, so I will be $2,000 further back than if I did 

 nothing this year." That is a fact in many instances. 



We are learning the value of a dairy cow over there. We 

 are testing cows, the same as you are here, and when we send a 

 cow over here for you to buy you may consider that cow is one 

 that has been found unprofitable, because there is a great demand 

 in the Western states for the cows which you are after, and we 

 all know that that reason has caused cows to increase in value 

 from $30 to $50 and $60 apiece. 



This matter of supplying cows to the herd is a serious one 

 and not one for future consideration, it is a matter that must be 

 considered right now and, as I said a rqoment ago, the quality of 

 cows that you will have in ten or fifteen or twenty years there 

 is something more that you will have, you will have the reputation 

 of owning good cows, and if this Elgin district, which has the 

 name of being the greatest milk producing portion of the United 

 States, would take on a general line of producing dairy cows, in 

 the course of twenty-five years, if you work as. hard at that as 

 you have worked at production of milk, I venture the assertion 

 that you will be the most noted section of the United States as a 



