Graham guardian., 1907-08-09


scales, and l have given the argu-
ment so many times that it would
pay in other ways. If a man hires
men to milk his cows he can afford
the time because the men will be
more intesested in the cows, but
the people do not do it. Here is a
man who read that paper who
does do it. How many men in
this audience keep record of each
COW in their herd, how much milk
each COW gives, what it tests and
how much it costs to keep each
COW? That is very good but you
want to understand that this is a
representation of the best dairy
men in the state of Minnesota and
there were not more than a dozen
hands held up. If you go out and
ask the average man this question
there will be mighty small per
cent that you will find do it,
~ believe that we have been
wolkipg at this thing from the
the wrong end. We have
been asking the individual farmer
to do this and he does not do it.
He has lot to do, there is no
question about that. The farmer
has u whole lot of things to look
after. l believe the dairymen in
the intensive dairy districts of the
old world have gone at this in a
more practical manner than we
have. Instead of having each man
test bis own cows, they cooperate
and hire a man in each neighbor.
hood to test for all of them, and l
believe that is practical, more prac'
tical than asking each man to test
his own cows. Over in Denmark,
for instance, IN that little kingdom
one. quarter of the size of the area
of the state of Michigan (l don't
know about your area here) they
have today over four hundred CO
operative testing associations, or
what they call "Control Associa-
tions." If we believe what others
tell us, who have been there and
Investigated that subject thorough
ly, we know that this idea Of test
ing cows over there the last ten
years has increased the net profits
of the dairymen of the kingdom of
Denmark rs per cent on the aver
age, that in many individual IN
stances the net profit has been in.
creased more than 100 per cent.
Snow that Is what we are try.
ing to do in Michigan today, is to
encourage the farmers to cooper.
ate in the testing of cows / be-
Iieve it is more important than it
is to cooperate in the manufacture
of butter or the manufacture Of
cheese, for the COW is down to the
very basis for improvement in
dairying. Michigan is behind in
a great many things, but there is
one thing that she is ahead in and
that is the cooperative COW testing
associations. Michigan has three
cooperative cow testing associa-
tions today, one of which has been
in operation now over a year. We
have the records for the first years
work in cooperative testing as
sociation on the plan that l have
briefly intimated here. The dairy
and food department is going to
publish the detailed results of the
work in that association for dis.
tributlon to our farmers there,
with the hope that we will en-
courage more of them to take an
interest in this because believe it
is the basis of improvement in
dairying. The idea of this asso-
citation is that the COW that pays
the profit 10 the one for Ms to keep.
1t does not make any difference
whether she is Jersey,a Guernsey,
a Holstein, an Ayrshire or Short
horn, if she can make q profit that
COW is worthy of our feed and our
care; if she cannot, then she is not
worthy of it.
81 might say few words briefly
about the practical, operation of
these COW testing associations, The
idea is that you get cows enough
in the association SO that the farm
ers pay for the official tester pro
rata, according to the number of
cows in the association. For in