54 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
errors were brought before us the more apt we were to 
correct them. The main point to consider was the stock 
from which we got our milk. One trouble was that we 
kept too many cows that did not pay, that ate up the 
profits of the good ones. The average cow gives about 
3,000 pounds of milk per annum. It should be from 5 >° 00 
to 8,000. The worth of the animal was measured by what 
it produced over and above what it cost to keep it. The 
way to get good stock was to raise it. A few years since 
he thought he was losing money by raising calves because 
he could buy them cheaper than he could raise them, and 
so concluded to buy; but he soon found he was paying 
much more for the cheap animals—they proved to be the 
dearer. He selected his cows from choice stock both dam 
and sire. He could raise good cows this way. When he 
had bought them he never got as good ones as he could 
raise. You didn’t notice the expense of raising them. 
There was another defect—we were putting on the market 
goods that did not get sold. There was just one of two 
remedies that must be adopted for this : One-half of us 
must go out of the business, or we must produce only half 
of the year. Let the Eastern people manufacture the dairy 
goods in summer, and we would make in winter. Those 
were the most important of our failures. We asked the 
cow merchant to fill up the gaps in our cow ranks, and lost 
by it. Another trouble:—But few of us were educated to 
the business. We started out here thinking we could 
make and sell produce as cheaply as the Eastern people, 
but we found that to get high prices we had to make goods 
that would bring them. We were improving, though ; we 
fed cattle better. A few years ago it was not an extraordi¬ 
nary thing to see hides stretched on farmers’ fences ; but 
we have got past that. The average farmer can now, 
without a shudder, throw to his cattle an extra peck of 
