86 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



made more progress in the past few years than was made in the 

 6,000 years prior to the time of the beginning of this advance- 

 ment. But here in the Central West the man who is milking the 

 cow has been very busy with other things and he has not given 

 the attention to his dairy cattle that they deserve. He has made 

 wonderful improvements in the character of beef animals he 

 is breeding and feeding, also the hogs and the horses and the 

 farm equipment and machinery — but because of the fact that the 

 dairy cow has been considered a side issue, he has paid very 

 little attention to her and he has kept no records of her perform- 

 ance. As a result, comes the unfortunate fact which Prof. Rawl 

 presented to you the other day ; namely, that there is a large per- 

 centage of the 2,000,000 cows being milked in the United States 

 that have never returned a cent of profit to their owners, and I 

 want to tell you that the reason why this is so is because the peo- 

 ple who are milking those cows have not kept records. You 

 will agree with me, because you know absolutely that there is not 

 an American farmer living, who would, knowingly, go out to 

 his barn day after day, and 700 times in a year milk a cow 

 for absolutely nothing, and in many instances hand her a cent 

 for the privilege of doing so. 



Now, it is the truth, it is a fact that we know : the American 

 farmer is doing this very thing and why? There is just one 

 reason why he is, and that is because he doesn't know that he is 

 doing it ; he doesn't realize it, and there is absolutely no way for 

 him to find out that he is milking unprofitable cows, unless he 

 keeps records of what his herd is doing. 



As a rule, I am confident that the dairy herds of the Central 

 West are making nice profits; I believe there are very few entire 

 herds in the United States that are losing money, but the reason 

 that the cows are being milked that are losing money, is because 

 they are intermingled with other cows in the herd and are covered 

 up by the cows wdiich are making large economical yields and 

 large profits. 



We find in the testing associations that we have started 

 in Iowa — and it is found everywhere where testing associations 

 are started and records kept — that in one and the same herd are 



