92 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



great herds. An opportunity of this kind to arouse one's interest 

 was unknown to us a few years ago. This feature of the work 

 leads up to others and competition grows all the while, which 

 ultimately will double and treble the product and profit of this 

 branch of agriculture. 



Every iota of advance or success that every breeder and 

 every farmer makes from the standpoint of breeding, is made by 

 the sires which he uses, and too few of us have very well bred 

 sires to realize a fact which I am going to* tell you and which is 

 just as simple as anything could possibly be, and that fact is 

 this : Whenever we use a sire whose resulting daughters are in 

 the least particular poorer, less valuable or less productive than 

 their mothers, our efforts are an absolute failure ; we have accom- 

 plished nothing. 



On the other hand, whenever we use a sire whose resulting 

 daughters are in the least degree the superior of their mothers, our 

 operations from a breeding standpoint are a success. If the 

 increase in production of the resulting daughters of a cross with 

 a sire produced under the same conditions is only five or ten 

 pounds of butter more a year than their mothers, we are making 

 a degree of success out of our business, and if we continue this 

 success generation after generation, producing daughters that 

 will produce from five to ten or fifteen pounds more butter a 

 year than their mothers, it is only a course of a short time until 

 we will have a herd which is just as good as anybody's herd. 



I was impressed with this thought that had never come to me 

 before, in talking with Mr. Gillett. I asked him why he disposed 

 of a certain bull while he was yet young, and he told me that he 

 found that the daughters from that bull did not produce any more 

 milk than their mothers, and that the milk which they did pro- 

 duce was one-tenth of one per cent poor. He was keeping 

 records, and pretty close records, in order to note so small a dif- 

 ference in production between the mothers and the daughters by 

 the cross of this sire, but that is why that man has made a great 

 and wonderful success, such as we all know he has made, simply 

 through knowing what every sire he has used has accomplished 

 with his herd, and whenever the result was not a profit, that sire 

 was disposed of at once. 



