THIRTY-SIXTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 357 



can be done. There is no reason why all of the herds in the 

 United States should not be yielding as large an annual produc- 

 tion as these, if they were as intelligently handled. Dairymen 

 do not stop to consider the tremendous trifles in their business. 

 While the difference in earning power of these cows is only iij^ 

 cents per day, this small increase for each of the 18,000,000 

 cows in the United States would mean an additional profit of 

 $757,000,000 annually for the dairymen. 



The Folly of Not Knowing. 



We have been talking about this testing and keeping a rec- 

 ord of the individual cows so long that we wish it were not nec- 

 essary to say anything more about it, but so long as dairymen 

 persist in being ignorant of their cows' production, we shall keep 

 pounding away until they become acquainted with each individual 

 cow and save themselves the folly of converting high-priced grain 

 into "dribbles of milk and loads of dung," Bookkeeping has 

 shown that the shiftless hit-or-miss breeding of scrubs does not 

 pay expenses. The argument is plain enough. A dairy cow is 

 a machine for converting food into dairy products, and the best 

 economy and surest profit consists in employing the best ma- 

 chines obtainable. Remarkable improvement has come with the 

 grading up of dairy herds. 



The price of dairy products has advanced, but not in propor- 

 tion to the advance in the prices of grain and land, and under the 

 present conditions it is the height of folly to milk cows that do 

 not pay expenses. It is, therefore, a matter of great concern to 

 the dairyman to know what his cows are doing. 



Business Principles in All Details. 



''The very strength of the dairy business is its weakness." 

 Because it is so generally remunerative, people have come to be- 

 lieve that money can be made at it, no matter how conducted. 

 Milk production is like a chain made up of many links, and the 

 final result is no stronger or better than the weakest link which 

 Hmits the profits. 



