ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 35 



butter for 15 to 18 cents. I can remember when my father thought our family- 

 was going to ruin when he had to pay 25 cents a pound for butter. 



Mr. Buell : I think that dairying to-day is the best business, and that 

 men are very foolish in leaving it just at this juncture. 



Mr. Johnson : The trouble has been that for a few years past butter has 

 ruled enormously high, too high. The dairyman's ideas have got way up, and 

 he can't come down gracefully. He will sell his cows now, but he will come 

 back to it after a while. The question is whether there is more money than 

 anything else for us here in dairying. There is certainly no money in raising 

 and fattening cattle on our $75.00 land to compete with the men that raise cattle 

 on land that doesn't cost them a cent, especially in Indian Territory. 



The Chairman : I wish we could get at the actual cost of producing milk. 

 Prof. Henry, can you tell us? 



Prof. Henry : I do not believe I can produce milk for less than 60 cents a 

 hundred in winter. That is, going out and buying corn meal for a cent a pound, 

 bran at $12.00 a ton, and hay at $8.00 a ton, and saying nothing about the labor 

 or the capital invested, I do not think it can be done for-less than 60 cents a 

 hundred. Certainly this feed should go in at market value. 



Mr. Boyd : It seems to me you are going on a false hypothesis all the way 

 through, because one pound of milk from one cow is not the same as a pound of 

 milk from another cow. If I could produce a hundred pounds of milk for 60 

 cents in winter, I could make money very fast. 



Question by the Chairman. Do you not think it costs a little more to produce 

 Jersey milk per hundred pounds than it does of other cows? 



Mr. Boyd : No, sir; it costs less. They eat less in proportion than another 

 cow. You have to find out about each cow, how much it costs to keep her, and 

 how much she will produce for you. 



The Chairman : In other words, which is the best machine to manufacture 

 your raw material ? 



Prof. Henry : I made milk from the 15th of May to the 15th of June this 

 summer by keeping the cows up and feeding ensilage and corn, and my butter 

 cost 11 cents and a fraction— call it 12 cents a pound— allowing $3.00 a ton for 

 the ensilage and taking no account of the skim milk. 



The Chairman : Now, putting the skim milk at 20 cents a hundred, how 

 much would that reduce the cost of the butter ? 



Answer. Well, our cows all took about twenty-five pounds of milk for 

 each pound of butter. There would be about 6 cents for the skim milk left for 

 each pound of butter. The ensilage was used which we took from the second 

 crop of clover. We ran the mower through the field, and went along and picked 

 it up and threw it into the silo and covered it up. I count such feed as worth 

 $3.00 a ton. 



Mr. Stockwell : What do you consider the work worth for taking care of 

 this stock and making the butter? 



Prof. Henry ■ I do not like to be pinned down to that. I am giving a man 

 $20.00 and letting him take care of twenty cows, and you might get a cheaper 

 man, and he take care of more cows. I give you the figures as I have them. 

 Now, what you could make a pound of butter for will depend upon factors that 

 I cannot give. Hiram Smith says it takes one man to attend to ten cows, and 



