16 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



who are familiar with running a threshing outfit know that you 

 have got a certain fixed expense every day — so much for labor 

 repairs, oil, etc., and if your men loaf away a great deal of their 

 time and don't thresh enough "to pay expenses, it is a losing 

 game. That is what the poor cow is doing, she is playing on 

 the job. If you have got a good cow that has the ability to do 

 the business and you don't feed her, she can't do it. Every day 

 that you are running that threshing machine, after your men 

 have threshed grain enough to pay for running expenses, what- 

 ever is made above running expenses is clear profit. That is 

 the way I look at it in the dairy business. A cow has to have 

 so much feed to maintain her body and to create energy to do 

 the work; all feed that she consumes over and above this she 

 converts into milk and butterfat. The difference between a good 

 and a poor cow is this : the good cow can handle a good deal 

 more feed than the poor cow can, that is why, in selecting a 

 dairy cow she wants to have a large barrel, she has to have the 

 ability to change that feed into butterfat economically. 



I want to give you some of my experiences from the heif- 

 ers from cows that we first had sired by a pure-bred sire. I am 

 going to give you the average production of the dams and thi 

 daughters, and then the increase. I want to say that not every 

 daughter makes an increase over her dam, especially not in a 

 scrub herd such as I had. In northern Illinois at this time you 

 will find nothing but fine grade Holstein cows. The kind of 

 cows that Stephenson county is keeping at the present time is 

 very much superior to what we kept ten or fifteen years ago, in 

 fact ten or fifteen years ago every farmer had a scrub sire and 

 usually a Shorthorn at that. When I was a boy every farmer 

 had a Shorthorn or scrub sire, but now you will find but very 

 few of them. Where you find red cattle, they are not dairying 

 there. The Holstein is the best adapted to cheese factory pur- 

 poses. As I told you the Green county cheese factories have 

 come down into Illinois so that the Holstein cow is the one 

 wdiich predominates. I know of one Jersey herd, but I don't 

 think at the present time of a single Guernsey herd in Stephen- 

 son county. 



Not all of my heifers have made the increase that these 

 have made, but I only had one heifer that did not do as well 



