ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 185 



Five years ago I learned in about five minutes more about 

 a certain subject that is costing Illinois millions of dollars — 

 avoiding smut in oats. 



Now the record of my dairy herd. I can't help but call 

 your attention to the fact that it would have been impossible for 

 me as an individual to have built up a herd that I have built up 

 without the co-operation of my family. Without the system we 

 have adopted, and the class of cattle that we have striven to breed 

 it would have been impossible for me to have done what I have 

 with hired help. 



I was manager for some years to dairies throughout the 

 country and depended upon hired help for attending the cows, 

 and I learned from experience that it was impossible to reach 

 the highest attainment in dairying with the hired help that we 

 have. You take a young man that is skilled enough to assist in 

 handling high class dairy cattle, and he is a man that you are 

 not going to keep very long, he is going to do something for him- 

 self. If he has skill enough to handle high class dairy cattle, he 

 has got skill to go on farther. 



I have found that the highest attainment in perfection of 

 dairy animals require that you breed your animals, and in a 

 very brief way, I will describe our methods of raising our dairy 

 animals. 



In the first place, we keep an accurate record of every indivi- 

 dual cow in the barn. Not only do we keep an accurate record, 

 but we know, by testing her milk from time to time, once in two 

 weeks or a month, what her butter fat production is a day, a 

 week, or a year, and these cows, in connection with the milk 

 sheets, we can either send to the butcher or raise their heifer 

 calves as the case may be. All of our best cows are treated in 

 this way, and we have all that make in profit and we have raised 

 the heifers from them. 



In the matter of sire?, we have never let our judgment 

 select young animals. What I mean by that, we never buy young 

 animals. We always make it a rule to study the herds in the 

 country and visit these herds and see the kind of heifers they 



