FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION 89 



my judgment the man who has good alfalfa hay and ensilage 

 has the best food that can possibly be given to cows. 



It is not my purpose to go into detail today concerning bal- 

 anced rations, as that subject is being continually agitated 

 through the press and from the platform. 



If we are to meet foreign competition successfully, we must 

 learn to produce economically and we must learn to make a fin- 

 ished product of the highest quality. The Good Book says that 

 you cannot gather figs from a thorn tree, but I have known of 

 excellent pears to be gathered from the thorn tree by a process 

 of grafting. Likewise great improvement can be made in the 

 offspring of a common herd by the use of a good sire from a 

 milking strain. You have heard the statement many times no 

 doubt, that the sire is 50 per cent of the herd. Now while this 

 may be somewhat exaggerated, the sire is a very important fac- 

 tor in building up a herd. Better results, however, will be ob- 

 tained if both sire and dam are descendants of a milking strain. 



Economical Production 



To produce economically the cow must be fed an abundant 

 supply of succulent food suitable for milk production. The milk 

 of a cow that produces 10,000 pounds of milk annually, contains 

 an average of about 8,710 pounds of water; 390 pounds of fat; 

 485 pounds of sugar; 340 pounds of protein or caseous matter, 

 and 75 pounds of ash. 



The cow, to a very large extent, is a machine. The efficien- 

 cy of any machine depends very largely on the care it receives. 

 A great many years ago I used to have charge of a large herd of 

 dairy cattle, and our method of watering this herd during the 

 winter months was to have them drink from a nearby creek. 

 During the extreme cold we had to cut holes in the ice. Invar- 

 iably the cows would drink very little while the extreme cold 

 lasted. The result was a great shrinkage in the flow of milk. 

 We did not need scales to ascertain this, for it was so apparent. 

 The cow did not have the material wherewith to produce milk. 

 It is much cheaper to warm ice water with coal in a tank heater 

 than to force the cow to warm it with 75 cents to $1 corn. 



I might ask how many dairymen know the efficiency of 



