90 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



ers, just to learn what their ideas were as to the value of keep- 

 ing records, so I asked him what he paid for Jacoba Irene, the 

 cow that made over 2,700 pounds of butter in three years, I asked 

 him what he paid for that cow, and he told me, but he told me 

 not to tell you ; but you can realize what a cow without a record 

 going into the auction ring would be apt to bring. He says : "Of 

 course I have no fixed price on her value now, but she is paying 

 me big interest on a $10,000 investment per annum." 



Now, the question is, is her real intrinsic value any more to- 

 day than it was five years ago when he bought her at the com- 

 mon average of a right good Jersey cow, and do you think that 

 the man who owned and bred this cow would have allowed her 

 to have gone out of his hands had he known what her real intrin- 

 sic value was? He would no more have disposed of her at the 

 price he received for her than the man who is milking a cow 

 700 times a year and paying for her feed without being paid 

 for his efforts would continue to do so if he knew what he was 

 doing. 



I also have a letter from Mr. Charles L. Hill, in which he 

 says : "I commenced to weigh the milk of the first pure bred 

 Guernsey I ever owned when she dropped her first calf in 1888, 

 and have weighed each milking of every cow since that time, and 

 as soon as the Babcock test was invented, I commenced, in 1891, 

 to keep fat records of the cows. Any advance I may have made 

 in the breeding or dairy business, and I might say, any that I may 

 hope to make, will be founded on the work done in keeping 

 records of the cows. How else can we hope to work improve- 

 ment? I now have animals whose maternal ancestors for seven 

 generations have yearly milk records, and five generations have 

 official yearly fat records." 



The very fact that the man who has not kept records has 

 not made any improvement and that the man who has kept 

 records has made improvements should be sufficient to make us 

 realize the extreme value of keeping records of what our animals 

 are doing. Mr. Hill also sends me some of his records, and 

 among them are fifty-six records of cows, ranging in age from 

 two years old to thirteen years old, with an average milk prodtfc- 



