128 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



Second — The stock is mostly of a very inferior grade for 

 milk. 



Third — Like the Chinaman, the tricks of the trade are 

 very peculiar and wonderfully deceptive. 



It is not profitable, for in most parts of the West, the 

 farmers have considered summer butter-making most profit- 

 able, because then you know the women folks do the milking, 

 skim and churn the cream, make the butter and feed the 

 calves, while the men folks are putting in long hours in the 

 fields. 



As a result the cows were bred for spring milkers. The 

 calves are raised, and as a rule they want good calves, for, if 

 steers, and will feed and raise for beef, and, if heifers, they 

 are treated about the same, as it would be too much trouble 

 to separate and feed differently, so they all run together. 



Some will millt a few quarts from each cow and then 

 turn in the calves to get the balance. Others will milk and 

 let the calf suck at the same time, and it is rare, indeeed, to 

 find a farmer in the West who will wean a calf at three days 

 old and raise it by hand. 



The cows are milked in this way three or four months, 

 then the calves are allowed to take it all for a month or two 

 more, and the cow is dried up at the end of about six months, 

 having raised a calf worth twelve or fifteen dollars, and per- 

 haps as much more in butter with which to pay for her year's 

 board. Such treatment does not induce habits that usually 

 make a cow profitable in our dairies, where she is expected 

 to give milk at least ten out of twelve months. 



Again, the breeding is generally wrong. The great live 

 stock industry of the West has been beef. Consequently 

 thoroughbred sires from the various beef strains are used and 

 as a consequence, in many cases, the only ability left to pro- 

 duce milk is the provision of nature to protect motherhood. 



The tricks of the professional shipper are many. And 

 as most of you older men have traded good dollars for ex- 

 perience, I will go into details only a little for the benefit of 

 our younger farmers. 



A car-load of these Western cows comes into Dixon. We 

 are notified by a hand bill that at 10 o'clock, on a certain day, 

 a car-load of extra good, fresh milch cows will be sold at a 



