94 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



Then another point which we are too prone to overlook, is 

 to determine what the sires used in our herds are really doing 

 for us. I am sure there are many cases, in fact, I have known 

 a great many examples where most excellent sires have been dis- 

 posed of, in fact, have been slaughtered and gotten rid of before 

 their real value could be determined. 



I remember some four or five years ago when I was down 

 in Massachusetts talking to Mr. Julian Hood. He told me that 

 one time his uncle sent him to Connecticut to buy some cows. He 

 bought quite a number, brought them home and began to milk 

 them, and without exception they were phenomenal cows. His 

 uncle said to him : "You better go back and find out where these 

 cows came from, what their ancestry is, how they happened." So 

 he went back and began inquiring and he found that these cows 

 without exception were daughters of Sophie's Tormentor, and he 

 came back and reported to his uncle. His uncle said : "You go 

 back and buy Sophie's Tormentor, it doesn't make any difference 

 what you have to pay for him. We want him." When he went 

 back, he found they had sold him, but he followed him up, finding 

 he had been sold several times. Finally he reached his last home 

 but he got there just the next day after that poor old bull had 

 been slaughtered. Now, one of those cows in that lot was Mania, 

 and she was the only cow that ever defeated Figgis in the show 

 yard, the cow that made a record of something like 675 pounds of 

 butter in her eleventh year and won the Grand Championship 

 prize at the St. Louis Exposition when thirteen years old. I 

 could tell you many instances of that nature, of just such sires 

 that have been lost because of the fact that one breeder after 

 using him for a time got rid of him, and he got out of his reach 

 before his real value had been learned. 



I believe every one of us should take extreme pains never 

 to let the sire we have used get out of our sight until we have 

 fully determined whether he was valuable by the performance of 

 his daughters and whenever in that way we locate a sire, that is 

 producing wonderful daughters for our herd, then the thing to 

 do is to keep him his lifetime. It is very seldom that we find 

 a breeder who is fortunate enough to get even one sire that is 





