FIFTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION 161 



soft and elastic and covered with soft, silky hair. The ud- 

 der as the cow feeds gradually expands, and as we milk 

 her it collapses. As she feeds again it expands; twice a 

 day during the milking period that process takes place, 

 and when cows have udders that are long and broad, at- 

 tached up well against the body and have proper texture 

 and quality as is evidenced here, they will be large pro- 

 ducers, providing their ability is reinforced with the right 

 kind of constitution, capacity, dairy temperament and 

 blood circulation. 



Now these five points we must have. After that, then 

 it is well to please our vanity, if we may call it that, by 

 looking for the color of cows we wish, the size of cows we 

 wish, and the other details, which are absolutely personal 

 with us and have little if anything to do with the produc- 

 tivity or the capacity of cows. 



Just one more point and I am through. That is the 

 question of where to secure these cows. I mentioned be- 

 fore that in starting in dairying one should not only have 

 good cows, but a good sire. We should bear in mind that 

 cows are nothing more nor less than the reflection of the 

 sires that have been used in generations preceding them. 

 Our cows of the future are going to be identically the kind 

 of cows that the sires we use will breed for us. The 

 strangest thing that I know about in all agriculture is the 

 carelessness with which sires are used on the American 

 farm. It is something that is absolutely impossible to 

 understand. Any good farmer realizes that if he is going 

 to raise good corn or wheat or oats or alfalfa or sweet 

 clover or anything else, he must use good seed. He seems 

 to recognize this same factor in connection with his pigs 

 and chickens and beef animals, but when it comes to 

 breeding dairy cows he seems to think it makes no differ- 

 ence what kind of a sire he uses, he can have good cows. 



Now there is no class of animals on earth that I know 

 about, that will respond so quickly to the use of either 

 good sires or poor sires. This is based upon the law that 

 like begets like or the likeness of an ancestor. That is as 

 true today as it ever has been, and we have known of that 



