136 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



DAIRY COW DEMONSTRATION AND LECTURE. 



Hugh G. Van Pelt, Waterloo, Iowa. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : It is a distinct pleasure to me to 

 have this opportunity of addressing the members of the Illinois 

 State Dairymen's Association. 



I am especially glad to speak to you upon the subject of 

 Judging and Selecting Dairy Cows, using this individual which 

 our mutual friend, John Nelson, of Peoria, has provided. It is 

 true that wherever cows are milked, good, poor and indifferent 

 cows are kept. Dairymen do not feed poor cows because they 

 like to milk them, but because they have never given the subject 

 a careful thought and Consideration, which it merits. 



There are five essential points to be considered in selecting 

 dairy cows, and I shall deal with these five points in a brief and 

 demonstrative manner this afternoon. 



There are good cows and poor cows all over this country. 

 Which are the good cows and which are the poor cows is a prob- 

 lem that must be solved. In our state we are making strenuous 

 efforts to determine the good cows and eliminate the poor ones. 



*In my experience I have never seen a herd but that some 

 cows in it were profitable and some were unprofitable, simply 

 eating up a portion of the profits that the good cows were mak- 

 ing. In testing associations which we have organized in Iowa 

 we find many peculiar instances. Oftentimes in one and the 

 same herd will be found two cows standing side by side, one of 

 which, when her record has been kept for a year, will have pro- 

 duced I GO pounds of butter, while the other, kept under identi- 

 cally the same conditions, being fed by the same feeder, milked 

 by the same milker, given the same foods in amounts and qual- 

 ity, will have produced, according to the scales and Babcock test, 

 400 pounds of butter during the same period of time. 



