54 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



don't know that they can raise a calf and keep it until two years old, and 

 have a calf by her side, for thirty dollars ? I believe you will say yes. Then 

 I want to ask you if, after you have got that heifer raised (a calf from one 

 of your best cows), if you would give her for such a cow as you have to go 

 upon the street and pay forty-five dollars for ? I believe you will say no. 

 Then does it pay to raise calves ? 



Let it first be fixed in your minds that it costs no more to raise a good 

 calf than it does a poor one. Good stock for the dairy seems to be within 

 the reach of every dairyman. There are the Holsteins, which have been 

 bred for centuries with the object in view of perfecting them in milking 

 qualities. There are the Ayrshires, for which wonders are claimed ; and 

 there are the Jerseys, that, when crossed with our larger kinds of stock, 

 make cows far above the average. The milking strain of Durhams we 

 know to be good, and we have now calves from this stock that are richly 

 worth raising, but instead we are sending them to the butcher. Good males 

 from all the above breeds are within the reach of us all. And when we con- 

 sider that it .costs no more to keep a good bull than a poor one, what matter 

 if we pay one, or even two hundred dollars V Suppose four or five dairymen 

 join in the purchase of a first class male, and breed him to a part of each 

 dairy — those, of course, that are the best milkers — raise the heifers and sell 

 the males to others. Good milking stock is within the reach of every dairy- 

 man. 



" But," says one, '' I have no room, no time, for raising calves." Then I 

 say keep fewer cows and better ones ; make room for the calves. Then 

 again, we hear them say '' it costs too much ; the milk that a calf would take 

 in raising up fit to go on to grass would fetch more than the animal would 

 be worth." Now in my plea for the calves I would say to those of you who 

 take milk to cheese or butter factories, that it is easy to make arrangements, 

 if done when you contract your milk, so that you may obtain either skimmed 

 milk, buttermilk, or whey to raise the few calves you need to keep up your 

 dairy. A calf need not have new milk; give liim the extra keeping when 

 he gets so as to eat oats or bran, which they will begin to eat at four weeks 

 old. Calves can be successfully raised on sweet whey and oat meal, warming 

 them both together. What the calf will lose in growth the first six months 

 can be put on the next six months by grain and good care. 



Whatever else eastern dairymen visiting us have failed to notice, they 

 have not failed to remark that we had finer cows than they, but no finer than 

 they used to have when they raised their own stock. As the country sur- 

 rounding these dairy districts became exhausted and in course of time turned 

 theft attention to dairying, they were obliged to reach out farther, glad to 

 purchase anything that was in the shape of a cow, until America should be 

 ashamed of the class of cows that characterize eastern dairies. If we pur- 

 sue the course we are now persuing it will be but few years before we, like 

 them, will have inferior herds. We have already exhausted the country 

 adjacent to us, and the cows we get are inferior in form and milking quali- 

 ties, when compared with the cows we used to raise, or were able to get 

 from our neighbors. Great praise is due to those who have introduced and 



