BULLETIN 972, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
least it appeared that way to her owner, since she would give milk 
for only five or six months and then go dry until the next freshening. 
When her owner found out from the first year's records that she had 
been dry for six months and had produced only 3,351 pounds of 
milk during the year, he decided that she should go to the stock- 
yards at Omaha when she went dry again. So, as soon as the cow 
freshened, the owner began to feed her a little grain to keep her in 
condition so that it would not take so long to fatten her for beef 
after she went dry. But Prohibition did not go dry. With that 
extra grain she kept milking month after month, and at the end of 
the year she had 7,043 pounds of milk to her credit. The owner did 
not sell her, but he did change her name. 
Fig. 1. — A bam typical of those on the farms studied. 
A study of the original figures shows that grain was not fed so 
economically as it could have been. During the first winter one herd 
received only 3.8 pounds of grain for each 100 pounds of milk pro- 
duced, while another herd received 82.5 pounds. Such a wide range 
in the quantity of concentrates fed was probably due to the fact that 
the dairy business is relatively new in this section and the most 
economical methods have not yet been generally adopted by the 
dairymen. Some dairymen in this section, however, are already 
following profitable methods of feeding and are giving their herds 
better care and improving them by breeding and selection. There 
was also a wide variation between the two winters and between the 
two summers in the quantity of grain and roughage fed. The wide 
