98 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



members with him. The more members the better it is for the 

 community. The equal assessment per block has a tendency to 

 have each block do as much as possible in getting members into 

 the association. 



As to the cost of operating such an association. Here is 

 the principal cause from which this kind of an association has 

 sprung. It is the need of reducing the cost of providing pure- 

 bred bulls for a community. The associations that I know of 

 have a wide range in the cost and the highest one I have any rec- 

 ord of is $75 per member, the next highest comes to about $35, 

 and it runs as low as $8. There are quite a number at $25 or 

 less, it depends upon the number of the membership and the kind 

 of bulls purchased. Just think of the possibilities here in devel- 

 oping a pure breed in your community. Associations have been 

 formed that I know of where they have as many as 130 mem- 

 bers and that association has a cost of about $20 per member. 

 Here they have provided pure-bred sires for those 130 mem- 

 bers for a cost of $20, and this $20 is not the same as when a 

 fanner purchases a bull for his own herd; it covers a period of 

 ten years where the association has five bulls. An investment 

 of $20 is an investment for ten years, of course, barring acci-* 

 dents, but the accidents are less most likely because they have 

 a less number of bulls than where they are not organized. 



In looking over the possibilities in several communities for 

 starting one, I got figures of conditions there. I found the num- 

 ber of scrub bulls would run as high as four times as many a9 

 needed in that community at an average cost of about $75. Now, 

 if they would organize they could, for the same money as in- 

 vested in scrub bulls, buy pure-bred bulls that would run up in 

 value to $200 and $300 each, so you see that small investment 

 represents the same amount for the use of a pure-bred sire in an 

 association as it does to own individually a scrub bull such as we 

 find mostly in a community. Of course that is a theoretical con- 

 dition that I am quoting, but the actual conditions that we found 

 in the first one that we gave any assistance in organizing bore 

 these figures out very strongly. In that community 16 farmers 

 w^ent together and organized an association, they purchased bulls 

 that were worth $240 on an average, that makes it $75 on an 

 average for each farmer. This association had the highest, cost 



