192 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



It is generally always better to have a breed of dairy 

 cows which are common in your community, because any 

 surplus stock you may have for sale can be disposed of to 

 much better advantage than would be the case if the 

 breed you have were not common in your community. An- 

 other advantage is that when you once have had a good 

 sire and can no longer use him, you can dispose of him to 

 your neighbors. In many cases neighbors can exchange 

 sires or where the herd is too small to have a good sire, 

 two or three neighbors can club together and purchase a 

 much better sire than one with a small herd can afford 

 to buy. 



If one is selling butter fat only and the skim milk is 

 fed to young stock, it will not make very much difference 

 which one of the dairy breeds you have. Generally speak- 

 ing, Guernseys or Jerseys are a little more economical pro- 

 ducers of butter fat than the other breeds. In part this is 

 offset, however, by the fact that the other breeds will pro- 

 duce more skim milk, which is a very valuable feed for 

 growing stock. 



Wherever whole milk is sold either to cheese factories, 

 condenseries or for city milk trade, the Holstein cow pre- 

 dominates on account of the large flow of milk she pro- 

 duces. While Holstein milk tests are lowest in butter fat 

 of all dairy breeds, the Holstein cow will produce enough 

 milk in a year to equal and, in many cases, to exceed the 

 butter fat production of the other breeds. 



It costs more to produce one hundred pounds of high- 

 testing milk than it does to produce one hundred pounds of 

 low-testing milk and, until the consuming public will be 

 educated to be willing to pay for this difference in produc- 

 tion cost, the Holstein cow will predominate where whole 

 milk is sold for city consumption. So far as the average 

 yearly production of butter fat is concerned, the differ- 

 ence is not so great between the different breeds. Of the 

 average of all the official records of each breed up to sev- 

 eral years ago, the Holstein led in both milk and butter 

 fat production, averaging 14,974 pounds of milk and 505 

 pounds of butter fat with an average test of 3.42 per cent 



