336 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



tion and the individual cows that do not return the owner a net 

 profit of $12 or $15 per year— and their name in Illinois is legion— 

 scarcely justify his investment of money, time, and labor in keep- 

 ing them. A study of these herds shows that the economical 

 thing to do is to sell the poor cows to the butcher as fast as they 

 can be replaced with better producers. The latter can be accom- 

 plished either by more judicious buying or by raising the heifer 

 calves of high-producing mothers, mated to a pure-bred sire 

 having a line of such mothers in his ancestry. This is not so dif- 

 ficult to do when once the dairyman sets his standard of a cow, 

 determines definitely what kind of a cow he will buy or produce, 

 and goes after that cow instead of taking something" else that 

 may be cheaper or easier to get. The greatest practical difficulty 

 is in discovering which cows are poor and how poor they are. 

 This is quite easily done — in just one way — by weighing and 

 testing the milk of each cow often enough throughout the milking 

 period to get a fair estimate of her worth. Scales and a Babcock 

 test cost but a few dollars and their use may easily lead to an im- 

 provement of the herd, that will add hundreds to profit annually. 

 Should not every dairyman ask (and answer) the question, "On 

 which side of the profit line — and how far from it — is my herd 

 and every individual in it?" 



Comparison of Individuals. 



Here at the experiment station are two cows, the story of 

 whose work is worth telling wherever cows are kept. They were 

 both bought for good producers but they didn't turn out alike 

 In fact, their progress has been in opposite directions, and yet it 

 is hard to tell which has the more valuable message to Illinois 

 dairyman. 



These animals are neither freaks nor creations of the college, 

 and they have not been abnormally developed to produce different 

 results. They were brought up alike on the farm and obtained 

 their early education in the same herd of 100 cows in the Elgin 

 region. Here at the university, with the same identical surround- 



