FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION 87 



in wages paid there in comparison to what we pay here. On one 

 of the largest dairy farms in England, male help was paid from 

 $3.50 to $3.75 per week and they boarded themselves. They 

 were furnished, however, with a small cottage and garden. 



In the Ayrshire district of Scotland, where dairying is car- 

 ried on as extensively as any place in the world, the women do 

 a lot of the work, hence the labor is not very expensive. The 

 same thing is true in Denmark, the noted dairy country. 



Siberia, where the dairy business has developed possibly 

 more rapidly than in any other country in recent years, pays the 

 farm help very low v/ages, not exceeding 25 cents per day. 

 Dairying there is aided by the government. This, in connec- 

 tion with their cheap land, puts them in condition to offer the 

 strongest kind of competition to countries like our own, where 

 wages are extremely high. 



In addition to the difference in wages the European farmi:* 

 ers in most sections where dairying is carried on extensively, 

 have specialized in dairying, making it their chief business. The 

 result is that the production per cow is from one-third to one- 

 half greater than it is in this country. 



From such statistics as are available in this country, the 

 average production per cow does not exceed 140 pounds of but- 

 terfat. The average for the whole of Denmark is 220 pounds 

 per cow. The average for the 40,000 cows in their test associa- 

 tions is 284 pounds per cow. The average in the Ayrshire dis- 

 trict in Scotland is fully as high as that in Denmark. In the 

 dairy districts of England, the special dairy types are not kept 

 very extensively. They seem to prefer the milking strain of 

 Shorthorn, known as the Bates type, owing to the fact that they 

 value the calf highly for beef purposes. While cows of this kind 

 will not produce as economically as the special dairy type, yet 

 they get very good results with this breed of cattle. The milk- 

 ing Shorthorn type has been bred so long for dairy purposes thai- 

 it has virtually become a dairy breed. I visited one farm where 

 they milked constantly 200 Shorthorn cows. The annual aver- 

 age of the herd, including heifers coming in fresh and cows go- 

 ing dry, was 6,400 pounds of milk per cow, with an average 

 test of about 3.8 per cent fat. 



In European countries more attention is given to feeding 



