114 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



tablishment in our town that's raising pure bred black skunks and mak- 

 ing money. One night an old skunk led them over the fence and they 

 all went over. I was awfully sorry for the fellow, but there's money in 

 pure bred stock. 



In the old country, we find the pure breeds of stock. What would 

 we have done, if they had not done it? They were so positive that they 

 were right. They bred that old red cow that when her heifer calf came 

 they made it a little better than they made her mother. The short horns 

 and the long horns made theirs as well as they could, and the short horns 

 were the best. 



We Americans don't know anything about this business. I was go- 

 ing to say this when I started in. It will take lots of time to get into 

 the dairy business. You can get out of the dairy business without learn- 

 ing a whole lot of it. It will take time to manage your fields to produce 

 abundant dairy foods, and you don't want to manage any other kind of 

 crop of your dairy farm. 



I believe in specialties. If you go into lumber business, stick to it; 

 if in the dairy business, do that only and do your work well. We have 

 been the biggest fools in the world trying to learn what we can't do well, 

 when we ought to have been following out one line of thought and do- 

 ing better every year. A progressive school teacher always leaves his 

 school improved every Friday night. It takes time to build "barns and 

 to know which silo you ought to build, but you ought to build anyhow. I 

 built a silo and made it six feet in diameter and filled it with good silage, 

 and expect it will be there when I am gone for the cows that are left 

 on the farm. It has never been empty and I hope it never will be. 



As I said before, it will take time to get all of these things together, 

 and when you do, you are just ready to begin dairying. Yes, just ready 

 to begin when you get your barn full of cows, and a car load of bran, 

 gluten meal, and nice alfalfa hay and a whole lot of silage, and then it 

 takes a whole lot of grit to feed it out. You can't get into it and out of 

 it inside of ten years. 



You see I am coming right back to you and hit hard. How much 

 difference is there between beef men and dairymen? Just as much dif- 

 ference as between heaven and earth; just as wide apart as the east is 

 from the west. A man that owns forty cows forty years and has made 



