ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 2 \J 



fellow came along and took the large black bass, and put a little bit of a 

 sucker on the string. When he came back, the darkey pulled the string 

 up and looked at it in astonishmert. Then he looked at the sky, it was 

 the same sky, the same woods and the same spot. Then he looked at the 

 fish and said. "You little cuss, you've shrunk up so." 



I was to fill in here for a short time this morning, telling what we 

 are doing in dairy field work in Illinois; to tell you the character of the 

 work and how it is carried on. 



The State, during the meeting of the last legislature, made an appro- 

 priation for a small amount of field work to be done. It provided for a 

 man to go into the field and find out the actual dairy conditions as they 

 existed in Illinois. We have taken the Northern part of the State, as the 

 dairying is largely confined to this section. 



The work consists of a man going about and getting individual herds, 

 and takes the individual cows of that herd and see what they are doing. 

 It has long been realized by men who have made it a study, that the farmers 

 are carrying a great many cows on their farms that do not pay for their 

 board. 



The work we are asking the farmers to do is very little, to find out 

 what their cows are doing. We go to a farmer, who is interested in im- 

 proving his herd and interested in getting a greater profit for the feed 

 they consume, and furnish him with the apparatus for doing this work — 

 a pair of spring balance scales, the tablets for preserving the composite 

 sample and the bottles for holding the same. I go to his place and make 

 this test once in every seven weeks and enter the weights and the tests 

 of his milk in my record book, and all concerning his dairy work. In 

 this way we. are able to tellfwhat each cow has done. 



The work as we have it outlined at the present time is this: We have 

 the farmer weigh and sample each mess of milk every seventh week. 

 You may not think this often enough, but after taking a certain num- 

 ber of cows whose milk kas weighed and tested every day for a year, 

 and by doing this we know how much milk and butter each produced 



