162 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



law being in operation for the last two thousand years. 

 Interpreted into every-day language it means, use good 

 sires and you will have good cows; use common no-account 

 sires and you will have common no-account cows. So 

 again I would say in starting in the dairy business, I have 

 never greatly favored going out and buying a lot of good 

 cows. I have always believed we could take the cows we 

 have on our own farms, at least select the better of them 

 by the use of scales and the Babcock test, and then mate 

 them with good sires, knowing that each generation we 

 will have better cows providing each generation we use 

 better sires than we used the generation preceding. It is 

 absolutely a certainty that if you will use a good sire that 

 is strongly bred and therefore pure-sired, that you can 

 have any kind of cows that you desire. And take this 

 home with you: if you use just a common old cheap bull 

 without any breeding behind him, without any individ- 

 uality, you are going to breed that kind of cows. If you 

 will use a good sire, strongly built along lines of milk pro- 

 duction, mate him with your cows and raise heifer calves, 

 you will raise good cattle. 



The kind of a sire that we use is one that inherently 

 possesses exactly the points we desire in our cows, there- 

 fore we wish sires that have large nostrils, clean-cut faces, 

 broad between the eyes, large, bright prominent eyes. In 

 the sire we wish that the neck not only be fairly long but 

 well crested, clean-cut over the shoulder, especially deep 

 from the top of the shoulders and down to the chest, and 

 well sprung in the ribs. He should be straight and strong 

 of back, because we must realize that the proper build 

 depends as much on the cow extending upward as extend- 

 ing downward. If your cow has a back that falls from 

 four to six inches, then there must be that much fall down 

 here (illustrating), therefore we desire straight and strong 

 backs on our sires so that they will transmit that charac- 

 teristic to their offspring. He must be well sprung in the 

 rib and deep in the body, long from the shoulder back to 

 the hip bone, hide soft and covered with hair that is soft 

 and silky, because we must have that combination and that 



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