Thirty-fourth Annual Convention. ^^^ 



large dairy, numbering several hundred cows. No records of 

 the individual performance was kept and I, who came directly 

 from a farm, with a membership in a cow testing association 

 was eager to institute a system of records. I spoke to the owner 

 about it and explained the advantage of it, and he agreed with 

 me and told me to go ahead. He went to live in the city during 

 the winter and the management of the herd was left entirely to 

 me. There was much work to do, and in the course of a few 

 weeks I gradually settled down to routine work and had all but 

 forgotten about the system of weighing and testing that I had 

 proposed to the owner, when I received a letter from him in- 

 quiring how that particular part of the work was coming on. 

 I got ashamed of myself and began at once to weigh and test 

 each cow's milk and keep a record of the individual performance, 

 and when the owner came in the spring we went over the records 

 together and finally decided that it would be a good business 

 proposition to dispose of a number of cows whose yield had been 

 exceptionally poor. And we began discriminating between the 

 calves we raised and selected only those from the best cows 

 as members of the future herd. 



This would probably never had happened had there not been 

 something or someone to get me started. When a man gets 

 past school age he needs strong incentives to incite to mental 

 activity and to change methods to which he has been accustomed. 

 He requires some outside force or influence to develop enthus- 

 iasm for his work. There is not much in the every day life of 

 a dairyman to inspire enthusiasm, at any rate, getting up at four 

 o'clock in the morning and going out in the stables to milk ten 

 or fifteen ordinary cows is not going to inspire much enthusiasm 

 for dairying. But if those same cows are of a kind which give 

 a handsome profit every month in the year, then it is a different 

 proposition, and we become more interested. It does not cost 

 any more, and it does not take any more work to care for good 

 cows than it does to keep and care for poor ones, and we can have 

 good cows if we inaugurate this system of testing and put into 

 practice the lessons it teaches us. 



It is almost out of the question for the average farmer to 

 buy good dairy cows. Such are not very often found in the mar- 

 ket, and then only at very high prices. A man who has a cow 

 that nets him $75.00 to $100.00 a year is not going to dispose of 



