18 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



Cow No. 17. 8,912 pounds of milk, 361 pounds of fat; 

 the dam 5,970 pounds of milk and 270 pounds of fat, an in- 

 crease of 2,942 pounds of milk and 91 pounds of fat. I want 

 to say that the dam of Cow No. 17 was one-fourth Jersey and 

 three-fourths Holstein and she was a good cow. She did not 

 produce so much milk but you will notice she tested much higher, 

 and the daughter while giving much more milk than her dam, 

 the average production of fat was not so much larger, there was 

 an increase of 91 pounds of fat. 



Cow No. 24. I have the record of this cow and of her dam 

 and granddam. Cow No. 24 produced 11,199 pounds of milk, 

 in fact she produced 12,000 pounds of milk for four consecutive 

 years and almost 400 pounds of butter fat. These cows only re- 

 ceived ordinary care, they were fed balanced rations and turned 

 out to pasture, and milked twice a day. There was no special 

 pains taken to force them. The dam of this cow produced 

 8,199 pounds of milk and 264 pounds of fat. The granddam, 

 however, produced 9,802 pounds of milk and 386 pounds of fat. 

 Now, this granddam I had in my herd until she was seventeen 

 years old. I will give you the history, then I want to make a 

 point. I bought this cow in 1898 the second year I farmed. She 

 was a cow that came from one of the stronger Holstein herds 

 up in Green county, just across the state line. She was a grade 

 cow — I can't say just how well she was bred, but she was a 

 well-bred cow. The herd she comes from was established in 

 1876, the year the State Fair was held in Freeport. This cow 

 was fresh when I bought her. In those days I did not know 

 anything about how to feed a cow, in fact when I began to farm 

 I stopped reading school journals and subscribed for the ''Prac- 

 tical Farmer," published at Philadelphia, Penn., and at that 

 time Mr. T. Y. Terry was writing exclusively for the ''Practical 

 Farmer," and while I was raised and always lived on a farm, 

 Terry soon opened up a new world to me. I had never hnd a 

 farm paper up to that time, and in answering farmers he used 

 to tell them to "write to your Experiment Station." I did not 

 know of an experiment station, and I had taught school for ten 

 years, (laughter) so that I did not know anything about feed- 

 ing the cows, but I knew this much — that this cow always pro- 

 duced more than twice as much milk as any other cows I had. 



