138 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



and test them. If you do that three times during that period, and 

 get the average, you will have a close approximation. 



I find that a great many people do not take samples of milk 

 correctly. In our creamery work we find quite a few who are 

 not careful in taking samples. If a man milks a cow and takes a 

 small amount from the top of the pail, that is richer than that at 

 the bottom of the pail. From the time he began to milk the 

 cream began to rise to the top and the layer at the top of course 

 is richer. It is not right. It might be profitable for you to fool 

 the creameryman, but don't fool yourself. Get an accurate 

 sample of milk if you can. The best way is to have two pails 

 and when through milking, turn from one pail to the other, and 

 turn it back and forth, and get a sample of milk. That will be 

 more correct. 



In estimating the cost of feed for a cow, the farmer cannot 

 afford to weigh the ration every clay for every cow in his herd. 

 If there is anything in this world that I pride myself upon, it is 

 on being practical, and I believe it would be no sense to tell the 

 farmers to weigh the feed of the ration of each cow separate 

 every single day. They could not afford to do it. That is 

 something they would leave to our dairy schools and to our 

 experiment stations, and we pay the taxes to support them. But 

 the farmers can make a close approximation. You know about 

 how much hay you feed every day. You can take that feed of 

 hay and put it in a sack and weigh it. You know how much of 

 the other roughage part of the ration, and you can take these and 

 weigh them. And how much grain you feed, or you ought to, 

 and you can weigh that. Every time you change the feed mater- 

 ially, you simply make this estimate again, and you can come to 

 a close approximation of the feed for the dairy cow. We then 

 have something to base intelligent breeding upon. 



Selection goes hand in hand or before breeding. It is not 

 good business judgment to attempt to rear the offspring of un- 

 profitable cows. We want to select out the unprofitable cows 

 and raise progeny from the profitable ones if we wish to increase 

 the quality of the herd. 



