58 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



bill and you have got to extend the overhead expense, but 

 when you raise and grind your own feed, I am grinding 

 and mixing my own feed with a twenty per cent protein 

 costing me $1.55, from $1.50 to $1.63, an average of $1.55. 

 Can you buy one feed with a twenty per cent protein for 

 that? If you can, go to it. But we in southern Illinois 

 can't do it yet, so I feel when we grow these feeds and 

 begin to prepare them we are doing that much in the way 

 in which we should. 



When I bought my feed grinder, ensilage grinder and 

 feed cutter in order to cut down overhead on horsepower 

 that was eating the very life out of me in the winter time, 

 my good wife said, ''you are going busted sure." She is 

 usually a good prophet but that hasn't come true yet, be- 

 cause I realized that I had to cut my feed in order to cut 

 down my horsepower. If I was going to cut down my 

 horsepower with a tractor I had to manage that tractor 

 to work in the winter time, and if I could fill my own silo 

 at my own pleasure at any time I got ready, when the corn 

 was ripe, if I could work it in the winter time to save from 

 •seventy-five cents to one dollar on every one hundred 

 pounds of feed which I fed to my dairy stuff, that was 

 something which my cattle would not have to pay for, so 

 I hold with all the sincerity I have got, that it is a mighty 

 fine thing. 



When you and I can grow into these systems of con- 

 structive dairying by growing and mixing our own feed, 

 saving all this overhead expense, why should I pay sixty 

 to seventy-five cents on every one hundred pounds of feed 

 that I feed my dairy cows, just in order to get the mixture 

 on the floor? I can take my own hand and scoop shovel 

 and mix my own feed. Then I can run it through my own 

 feed grinder, and I feed my calves that way. 



These are all little things in a way, but there has been 

 many a man grown absolutely discouraged and disgusted, 

 because of the fact that he let many of these little things 

 eat the very heart out of the thing, and so it is. 



Gentlemen, in closing, I have felt like I kept the con- 

 fidence of my good friends in talking just thirty minutes, 



