ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. i j j 



It was shown here -this morn ing that if you take a dairy cow that will 

 only furnish 150 or 200 pounds of fat in the year, she may possibly not do 

 more than pay for her keep, and she may get you in debt. A cow with 300 

 pounds fat in; the year, will re turn you a profit. That is what I mean 

 by saying, the better the machine , as the cow is the machine, the better 

 and more economical and profitable it is. If you are raising grain, you 

 don't go and hunt up some old worn out threshing machine that will not 

 do a good job, a machine that will waste a good part of your grain, but you 

 want an up-to-date machine, one that will take out all of the grain you 

 have raised and save it for you; That is the difference between a good 

 dairy cow and an inferior or poor dairy cow. Again, if you are going to 

 haul your grain to market, you don't take an old wagon that will scatter 

 the grain, you get one that is whol e and perfect and will take all the grain 

 into it to the elevators. Why is it so many farmers will use inferior 

 animals, when the process is exactly the same. They all reduce your 

 feed to butter or milk, and the bet ter the machine the more profitable is 

 the business. 



When I was on the farm in Vermont, the Babcock test wasn't used. 

 We milked the cows and the milk all went in together, and the only way 

 we judged of the value of the cows was by the quantity of the milk she 

 gave. I don't think it was ever thought of testing in any way the quality 

 of that milk, at any rate I don't remember anything of the kind. At this 

 date you have. an infallible test. There is no need to use an inferior cow, 

 because you can test in a very short time and tell what she is doing. If 

 the cow was giving lots of milk we thought she was a good cow, but now 

 we know that that is not always the truth. The Babcock test is what de- 

 termines the value of your dairy cow. The butcher block is what tests 

 the beef cow. You dairymen have the advantage of us because you can 

 ascertain what your cow is doing without slaughtering her, but we have 

 toi kill heir to find out the test sometimes. 



I have some charts here which I wish to show you. Of course this re- 

 lated to the beef business, but the lesson may not be entirely valueless 

 to the dairymen. He wants to know his stock thoroughly to be able to 



