FIFTIETH ANNUAL CONVENTION 91 



Dairy cattle have been developed for one particular 

 purpose — a purpose which I think we often lose sight of 

 and which should have more consideration. What is the 

 dairy cow for and what is our purpose in feeding and 

 milking her? Some of you will, no doubt, say because of 

 the milk she givqs. This is true, but it is not the funda- 

 mental principle which I want to get before you as the one 

 big reason why we need better dairy cows. 



Cows, like hogs, chickens, sheep, etc., are feed mar- 

 kets. Some of you grow corn, and buy tankage and shorts 

 to feed your hogs. If you have good foundation stock of 

 hogs that will grow and mature quickly on a minimum 

 quantity of feed, you have no doubt found the hog to be a 

 profitable feed market. The same thing holds true for beef 

 cattle and poultry or other livestock. Some of you raise 

 wheat. If your land is properly plowed or disked and good 

 seed are planted and conditions are favorable, you have no 

 doubt found wheat a fair market for your labor and invest- 

 ment. After your hogs, or your steers, or your wheat has 

 been finished for market or harvested, you spend consid- 

 erable time and worry about the best place to market these 

 crops. 



If Jones offers you 7 cents a pound for your hogs and 

 Smith offers 8 cents there is not much question as to who 

 gets your hogs. If one buyer offers 70c a bushel for your 

 wheat and another bids 72 cents, the latter will undoubted- 

 ly get your wheat. I wonder how many of us really look 

 at and size up our cows in this manner. They are markets 

 for our alfalfa and silage, our corn, bran and cottonseed 

 meal. 



It has been definitely proved beyond a doubt that some 

 cows will return a higher yield of milk for the feed that they 

 consume and labor that is expended upon them than others. 

 In other words, some cows are good feed markets, while 

 others are poor ones. If one cow will return $2 from a 

 dollar's worth of feed and another only $1, we scarcely no- 

 tice it. Here is a difference of a dollar every time each of 

 these cows eat a dollar's worth of feed, and frequently with- 

 in a year, this difference is enough to buy something of 



