154 ILLINOIS STATU DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



cow. There is a large amount of Ayrshire records that I might 

 probably have gotten from the east, but I don't know oi any 

 being kept in the western country. 



Our method in this country of raising cows and selecting 

 them is very different from theirs in Scotland. Here we have 

 but few and try to keep every one we raise, consequently we 

 never do get a perfect herd. I visited herds of cows in Scot- 

 land where they had from forty to one hundred cows in one field 

 all pure Ayrshire, and after spending several hours in looking 

 over them I have failed to find one imperfect cow. There they 

 very carefully select a few of the best and keep only those, con- 

 sequently there is a constant improvement. The trouble in this 

 country is that they keep them all and don't improve the breed 

 and without selection they will be more likely to run down than 

 up, and of course that gives them in Scotland a large advantao-e 

 in producing good cows where they have but the one kind to 

 breed from and keep only the best. 



I don't know how much my herd of Ayrshires produce; Iship 

 my milk to Chicago. To-day I am milking about one hundred 

 cows and have never kept a record for any month consecutively 

 for the whole herd. I recollect making one test which showed 

 that sixty cows averaged from sixty-two to sixty-four pounds a 

 day for about six weeks, and they had no feed except what the 3 

 took out of the field. That is as good as I ever knew any o 

 my Ayrshire cows to give that I kept a record of. 



I won't say that all Ayrshire cows are good, but I hav 

 never seen a very poor one. They are something like the 

 Irishman said about the whiskey, he said there was no bad 

 whiskey, but some was better than others, and I will say there 

 are no bad Ayrshires, but some are better than others and some 

 worse than others. As to these tests that have been made that 

 we hear about, my experience of such tests is that the result is 

 very vague arid uncertain. I could relate to you one instance 

 under my own knowledge where a man made a test of a cow 

 and stated that the cow was doing such and such things, the 

 test being made in the winter, when in fact, the man that fed 



