The Green Forest tribune., 1911-07-07

farm products. or this amount Iowa o1 one cent per pouLG this wnneY to be spent for the employing Of an eX, pert to do everything in his power for the assistance of the patrons and for the upbuilding of dairyina tn that community.
 Now, experience tells us exactly what will be the result Tho farmers of this organization will dispose of the unprofitable cows They will keep the good COWS and during the next year. although they do not produce so large an amount of milk and butter fat, tba labor OH the farm with the COWS will be less, feed will be saved and the net profits will be far greater. Then. and not until then, does the farmer become really interested in the busi- ness ot milking COWS. Then it is that he sees the manner in which real profit can be made from his herd. His eyes have been opened to some really wonderful facts. He has found that wEere one COW was producing 100 pounds of butter in a year and barely paid for her keeping, another COW standing by her side has produced 800 pounds of butter, making for him a profit of from $75 to $90 even after considering the value of the skim miik and the manure from the standpNnt of it's fertilizing value With this fact in mind and more interested in the business, he is not. satisfied at dis posing of the poor COWS alone, so he begins at once to build up his herd, Then il is that he seeks knowledge relative to the proper points to be observed in the selection. breeding, feeding ard the caring for COWS, and |, cn it is that it becomes possible for the experts hired by the Iowa State Dairymen's association to be of as- sistance to him. The spirit of i'm provement has reached farther than the legislature and the Dairymen's as- sociation, so that at the present time much good is being done by public spirited men along this same line of improvement.
 Iowa Cow Culture Club.
 Probably no one has excited so much interest in dairying during the past year as has MT w w Marsh of Waterloo, Iowa During this time he has made two or three trips to the island of Guernsey and imported from there, regardless of cost, nearly 100 head of the very finest Guernsey cattle that money could buy. He was the organizer of the Iowa Cow Culture club and put up $1,000 in cash to be divided as prizes among the f2 COWS producing the most butter in Iowa After he had started the game many others followed. The Iowa State Az riCultural college at Ames agreed to make official the records of these cows by sending tester to the home of each COW once month. By so doing, when the years test has been completed each COW will have an off cial record of the exact amount of milk and butter that she has produced during the year and there will be no guesswork about it.
 Hon. J. J. Richardson of Davenport Iowa, than whom there is no more in- fuential man connected with the American Jersey Cattle club of New York city at once set about to induce the Cattle club to duplicate MT Marsh's prizes for Jersey cattle that might enter the contest and win w. B. Barney of Hampton Iowa, pres ident of the Iowa Dairymen's assoeia- tion and likewise influential with the Holstein-Friesian association of Amer ica, induced bis association to dupli- cate the prizes to the extent of $500 for Holstein COWS that might be win ners of portion of Mr. Marsh money, and then it was that everyone seemed anxious to put up prizes for the good of this cause and seven or eight pure bred dairy bull calves were offered as prizes to competitors own- ing common grade cows. Dairy sepa- rators, milking machines and prizes of all kinds were offered, until finally the prize list amounted to between four and five thousand dollars, and then it was that the farmers of Iowa began entering their cows until at the time when the date for entry closed there were found to be competing in the one large association l60 COWS and surprising are the facts that have been revealed from month to month. A
 large number of the cows have been producing from 40 to 100 pounds of butter per month and, on the other hand, large number of them have been producing from 10 to 15 pounds of butter month: or, in other words some of the COWS in the test are the equal in milk and butter production and, in the end, in the production of profits to their owners, of eight or ten of the cows on the other end This yearly contest will be finished by the first Of August, 1910, and the yearly production of 160 COWS can then be figured up. At that time it is planned to duplicate the test and al- ready much prize money has been of fered for the COWS that will enter for another such race.
 Now, the value of such contest is not in the prize which the owner of COW may win, because this feally is a small portion of the real good, but it is surprising as well as very gratifying to find how intense the interest of the owner of the COW becomes when she begins her race in a public contest He at once wishes to learn the very best ways of feeding and caring for her and there is an impulse which leads him on to increasing his edl- cation along lines that will better the conditions in the dairy for all time