364 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



attempt to make money without the application of business prin- 

 ciples. The milk producer must stop guessing, and know f )'' 

 sure what the results will be of the different operations conducted 

 in different ways, and in each case adopt the one that will return 

 the most profit. It is the net result from a cow that tells whether 

 she is making a profit or not. We cannot know what that net 

 result is if we do not keep a record. 



A great mass of the cows milked each day are kept by men 

 who are simply cow keepers and not dairymen. Even on what 

 would be considered good dairy farms there is frequently aimless 

 breeding, thoughtless and shiftless feeding, care, and housing of 

 the cows. All of this results in lack of sufficient returns. The 

 investigation of the dairy conditions of the state, made by this 

 department in the past twelve years, shows plainly that the dairy 

 farmers are not receiving the profits due them for the invest- 

 ments of money, time and labor that are put upon their farms. 



Why the Business Often Fails to Return Profits. 



Dairying needs a re-adjustment; dairy cows instead of just 

 cows; dairy knowledge instead of "as father did." Dairymen 

 have a vague and confused idea as to what it is, after all, that 

 determines their profits in dairy farming. Large sums of money 

 are invested in numerous acres of land, extensive and expensive 

 buildings, costly horses, tools and machinery, high priced feed 

 and labor, and all of this outlay turned to raising crops that do 

 not yield anything like the amount of digestible nutrients per 

 acre that should and could be obtained, and to feeding and caring 

 for a herd of cows utterly unable to return a profit because of 

 their inefficiency and poor care. The same expenditure of money 

 and labor bestowed in an intelligent manner upon the same farm 

 and an efficient dairy herd would return a most handsome profit. 



$1,800 From 40 Cows vs. $2,000 From 20 Cows, Half the Labor and Half 



the Land. 



Here are a few more contrasting examples showing what 

 intelligent application versus the lack of it does in the dairy busi- 

 ness. One dairyman produced $2,000 worth of milk from 20 



