L6 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



One of the greatest mistakes we have made in past years, 

 is in not raising our heifer calves, as now the demand for good 

 cows is greater than the supply. When well-bred grade two- 

 year-old heifers sell for $75 to $100, it would seem we could 

 market some of our surplus feed to good advantage through 

 this channel, instead of sending so many thousand dollars to 

 other states each year and buying something they want to get 

 rid of. 



1 recently looked over an old program of the third annual 

 meeting of this Association, which was held in Elgin thirty- 

 eight years ago. The topics discussed there were largely the 

 manufacture of butter and cheese, which generally represented 

 the dairy industry at that time through the Fox River \^alley. 

 There was one condensing factory in Elgin, that bought a limit- 

 ed amount of milk, the only one then in the state. My subject 

 on the program — the first one I ever participated m — was : 

 "Which Is the Most Proiitable, the Manufacture of Butter or 

 Cheese, or Both?" And of the twenty-five or thirty men who 

 took part in that meeting I am the only one left. I have been 

 engaged in the dairy business ever since, doing my share of the 

 work, and sometimes more. My faith in the possibilities of 

 dairying has never faltered, and from that day until this the cry 

 has gone up that the dairy business would be overdone; still the 

 demand for milk never was so sharp, nor the competition keener 

 and the price higher, than this past year. Those creameries and 

 cheese factories have all disappeared and the milk has been ab- 

 sorbed by condenseries and bottling plants, and the Chicago 

 market, which takes 35,000 eight gallon cans of milk daily; also 

 the consumption of ice cream has doubled in the last thrcvT 

 years. 



In former years we all ran summer dairies and had to con- 

 tend against heat, drought and flies. Now the bulk of this milk 

 is made in the winter season. Having the cows freshen in Sep- 

 tember or October, they will milk a longer period, milk steadier 

 and give a larger flow. Help is more plentiful and you have 

 more time to look after your dairy. With the silo and alfalfa, 

 you have the balanced ration throughout the year, or feed equal 



