174 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



time after time in a half dozen tests, all running at once. 

 They put these coops on a table down in the basement in 

 the agricultural chemistry building at Madison, with not 

 very much light coming in through the windows. These 

 chickens were all related, fed alike, of the same age; in 

 every regard they were nearly alike one with the other. 

 Three hens in each coop had red neckbands, and three of 

 them had white neckbands. Only one point was altered. 

 Every day the hens with the red neckbands were picked 

 out, put in a little cage a foot square covered with ordinary 

 chicken net, taken outside and left out for ten minutes. 

 They were then brought back and the chickens turned in 

 the coop with the rest of them. Along one side of this 

 coop was a string of nests. These hens would go in these 

 nests and lay their eggs. They were trap nests, so each 

 egg was marked showing the hen that produced it. They 

 put those eggs in an incubator and allowed them to incu- 

 bate, and not yet have they been able to grow a chicken 

 to the age of eight weeks from the hens that remained in 

 that pen continuously, and they can take the chicks 

 hatched from the other group and they have no difficulty 

 at all in growing them. They seem to have the constitu- 

 tional vigor and ability to grow. The feeding was alike, 

 environment alike, breeding was alike, everything was 

 alike except each day the three with the red neckbands 

 were taken out and allowed the sun to shine on their backs 

 for ten minutes, if there was any sunshine. 



What has that to do with the dairy business? Just 

 this. The dairyman who builds his beautiful barns, puts 

 lots of windows along the walls, installs a good ventilating 

 system, drinking fountains along the stanchions, and keeps 

 his cows in there continuously, the dairy cow gradually 

 starves her body, gradually starves for the minerals needed 

 in making milk. Those minerals go out in the form of milk, 

 and she robs her body and robs it more and more and more, 

 and after she is pregnant she finds that she has not con- 

 structive material enough to build a foetus, and nature en- 

 ables her to lose her load by eliminating that, and she 

 aborts. 



