14 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



the dair^' business unless you make a business of it. You have 

 got to know what the cow is producing, and you have got to 

 know what you are feeding into that cow. Unless you do know 

 you are liable to be losing money. When I first started to farm 

 I kept cows just as farmer'^ used to keep them, and gave them 

 about the same care — didn't know any better. Before I farmed 

 I taught school for ten years and t^ug^ht arithmetic. Now, I 

 knew enough of arithmetic to know that I was feeding more into 

 my cows than I was getting out of them, but how to remedy the 

 matter I did not know. After I began farming I commenced at- 

 tending Farmers' Institutes, and at the second one I attended at 

 Freeport, I heard Mr. A. J. Glover, now associate editor of 

 Hoard's Dairyman, at that time connected with the Dairy De- 

 partment of the University of Illinois, give a talk in which he 

 showed the results that the University had obtained in testing 

 cows all over the state, and he said that there were about three- 

 fourths of the cows in the state that did not pay for their keep, 

 and that there were only one-fourth of them worth keeping. I in- 

 troduced myself to Mr. Glover and asked him to come and test my 

 cows. It is only since December, 1903, that I have kept a record 

 of every cow that I have on my farm, and I not only commenced 

 to keep track of what they were producing, but studied how to 

 feed them a balanced ration, and in three years' time the butter- 

 fat average production was increased an average of over 100 

 pounds per cow. 



I \vill give you the figures of my records to show you the 

 increase from year to year. There was no weighing done pre- 

 vious to 1903, but I had the creamery returns, and I will read 

 you the average production of the cows for the different years 

 up to the time I began to weigh and test the milk. Commencing 

 with 1900, the average production for the herd was 3,500 

 pounds of milk and 135 pounds of fat: 



1 90 1 — 4,648 lbs. of milk — 176 lbs. of fat. 

 1902 — 4,355 lbs. of milk — 165 lbs of fat. 

 1903 — 5,054 lbs. of milk — 190 lbs of fat. 



At this time I began to feed the cows a balanced ration. 

 While I was not weighing nor testing the milk before 1902, you 

 will notice there is a slight increase, that was due from the fact 



