The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-08-15
Losses from Inferior Cows.

Cultl LII III llliuoll hblA III w y
wish to press it now again (and per-
haps again and again) upon every
dairyman whose attention we can get.
1t is this; most dairy herds have in
them cows which do not yield enough
butter or cheese to pay the expense of
their keep and of manufacturing and
selling their product. Say you have
herd of forty COWS, averaging for the
year 80 pounds of butter per COW.
You are getting, perhaps, twenty cents
a pound for your butter the season
through. This will be thirty dollars
COW. 1t costs you, counting everything,
fifteen cents a pound to make and
market this butter, leaving five cents
pound profit, or $3.50 per COW per
year.
Now you very well know that hardly
any two of your cows are exactly alike
in their yield of milk, or of butter, the
year through. They will run all the
way, perhaps, from hundred to two
hundred pounds of butter in year.
AT the price stated above, hundred
pound cow would bring you in $50, and
two-hundred-pound COW $40. But
taking the whole product together, you
only average profit of $50 per cow,
at twenty cents pound for $50 pounds.
Is anything palmer than the fact that
in keeping that acknowledgement
COW Crowded that is her full average,
with the keep she is getting) you surely
lose $3.50 on her in year? To simplify
the whole thing we will suppose that,
instead of running all along from 100
to 200 pounds per COW, just one-half
the herd give you 100 pounds and the
other half 200 pounds each. The result
would be the same; and what is that
result? Here you have the figures:
Twenty at 100 ms each... 1000 lbs of butter.
Twenty cows at 200 lbs each.. 1000 lbs of butter.
Total 5000 lbs of butter
The whole cost of producing this
5000 pounds is fifteen cents a pound,
or 5000, equal to S22.50 per COW.
Twenty cows yield 900 bs at 20 cents..... s4OO 90
Twenty cows yield 1900 lbs, at 20 cents... 500 90
That is, your total income from the
forty cows is 81 200, and from this the
cost, 5000, must be taken, leaving $500
net profit.
Twenty cows, yielding 1000 TBS, bring in, at
~ $500 90
The expense them Observation-Disclosures. $50 90
$3.50 90
Twenty cost to keep...,..............s $3.50 90
They yield 1000 MS at 90 cents........,... 400 90
That is, you have to take $50 out of
the $3.50 you made on one half your
herd to make up the loss on the other
half. But this is not all, nor the worst
part of the whole business. We have
taken what is supposed to be pretty
near the average product of the dairy
COWS of Vermont, though $50 pounds
is perhaps little over the real yield.
The annual butter product of the state
is set down at 25,O00,000 pounds. Di-
viding the yield as above, the half of
our cows averaging but 100 pounds per
cow produce 1888, 1888 pounds; and this
vast quantity, made at loss, is thrown
upon the market where we also have to
sell the 16,666,667 pounds which we
make at profit. Now who can calcu-
late how much this 4 1876 tons of butter,
made at loss, depresses the market
for the 1882 tons we have made at a
profit? Nobody can tell exactly, but it
must certainly have greater depress-
ing effect than all the oleo that is sold
in the same market.
The moral of this whole thing is
that we must weed out our herds until
we know that we are feeding no more
cows than give us profit. This must
be a gradual process, and it can not be
even begun until we are in a position
to test accurately the yield of each COW,
and repeat the test sufficiently often to
be able to estimate closely the total
yearly product. 1t is certainly fact
that no other business on earth could
long be carried on with such leak in
it without ruin to the operator.
We know, of course, that the figuring
above is only approximate. Some will
say that it costs more to keep the two
hundred-pound cows than those which
yield so much less. Perhaps so. But we
do not believe there is cow in the state
yielding less than 125 pounds of butter
which is making her owner any money.
Why not, then, find out how many
such we are keeping, beef them, and
feed what they have been taking to bet
ter cows? In Mr.. Douglas seventh
article of his Rutland Herald series on
Making Farming Pay" he touches
upon this most important subject as
follows:
The profits derived from stock
farming NAV usually he credited IN the