FORTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION 131 



roped a bunch of Shorthorns and was trying to milk tliem, and 

 the reason he tried to milk them was because they were worth 

 nothing for beef; he had made his living by selling heifers. 

 It was necessary that we begin milking cows and we began. I 

 had taken notice of some things that I savv^ in Hoard's Dairy- 

 man which we did and we soon began to make more money. I 

 had an uncle in Kansas who had gone into the Holstein business 

 and when the railroad was built through that part of the coun- 

 try his boys left the farm and went to work for the railroad in 

 the division headquarters. They were established there and 

 these Holstein cows were sold at public auction. He lived about 

 25 miles away and my father went down to his brother's sale 

 and more to be a good fellow than anything else, to help this 

 sale along, bought two Holstein heifers. They were carrying 

 calves and freshened in the fall of the year. Those two Hol- 

 stein cows gave us more milk than all the rest of the cows we' 

 milked. It opened our eyes for dairy bred stock for dairy pur- 

 poses. These heifers came into milk and the value of dairy 

 blood was indicated to us on that farm. The question immed- 

 iately was of getting a pure bred bull and improving this herd of 

 ours along the line we had read and which we believed. We 

 found a pure bred Holstein bull which had served. It was 

 priced to us at $250. Let me tell you that that looked bigger 

 on that farm than $2,500 looked ten years later. It required 

 some nerve to sell enough of those red cows to get that bull, 

 but we bought him and while we were buying this fellow, the 

 man who had him to sell, showed us a magnificent four-year- 

 old cow, pure bred that he would like to sell for $100; that was 

 another jolt. So we bought this heifer, she was giving milk 

 a little and we stopped her and later she became fresh. This 

 cow was a magnificent specimen, I believe as fine as I have ever 

 seen. After she freshened my father tried to milk her and he 

 gave up the job, he said she milked too hard. My advice had 

 been followed in buying this heifer and it was up to me to milk 

 her and I milked her and I don't know whether she actually be- 

 came easier to millk or whether my grip got stronger, or both, 

 but we made a fortunate selection in that bull, he was worth 



