Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1912-08-09
COW POPULATION MUST IN
CREASE.
Must Double in the Next Thirty-five
Years If Common People are
To Taste Butter

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To Taste Butter
The demand for productive cows
during the past few years has provid
ed for the breeder Of dairy cattle {
most profitable business, for the farm
ers is rapidly becoming convinced that
there is vast difference between thu
profits yielded by the common COW ant
the COW whose ancestors have beer
bred for economical and profitable pro.
duction for over thousand years. AL.
though since 1875 the number of milk
cows has doubled, increasing from less
than II, 600, 900 to over q, 600, 900 dur.
ing the same time butter prices have
not practically doubled, but the price
of cows has increased $6.62 per head.
During the period the population has
more than doubled, showing that rapid
as has been the increase in the num-
Der of cows MIXED, they have not kept
abreast of the growing demand. Judg-
ing by statistics from reliable sources
the population il to again double dur
ing the next thirty-fve years, and in
order to keep the price of butter as
low rs it now is, the COW population
must also double. The breeders who
furnish the blood for improvement that
is necessary, as well as to increase the
number of cows from $4,000, 600 to a., :
600, 900, are assured of no calamity in
their business during their lifetime.
Rapidly the up-to-date farmer is
coming to the point where he is con-
Quoting his operations on strictly
business basis. He realizes that the
farm is but factory and that every
COW and every other animal is kept
there as a machine with a certain ca
pacity for converting raw materials
raised in the fields into finished COM
modify for the market. The value of
each cow-machine is measured by the
amount of feed she can eat and con-
vert profitably into milk and butter
fat, during the year.
To determine this point the dairy
man weighs and tests the milk of each
COW at intervals to determine the rela-
tive merits of the individuals from the
production standpoint and by deter
mining the amount and cost of feed
she eats during the time, he is prepar-
ed to say what is the profitable COW
and which is the loafer. In view of
the fact that there are 5000, 900 cows
in the United States that are eating a
portion of the profits the other 16, 0OO,-
900 cows are making, the sooner the
dairy farmer finds these and substi-
tutes for them cows of more profitable
types and breeding, the sooner he en-
larges the profits of his business. In
doing this he not only becomes a manu-
facturer in the truest sense, but he
also becomes wise banker in that he
refuses to loan to the COW year after
year that which she never returns nor
on which she never pays interest.
In the New England states farmers
who in the past thoughtlessly robbed
their farms of the profit yielding avail
able richness that was stored up in
their lands are now reclaiming those
same farms by the intelligent use of
the dairy COW. Each year the land
that provides for the dairy COW is
growing richer while the farms that
are devoted exclusively to growing and
marketing grain in it's raw state are
growing poorer and less productive.
The reason is not hard to discover for
it is known fact that with every ton
of corn sold off the farm, bringing
from $ls to $40, goes $3.50 worth of
fertility; ton of wheat worth S35 re.
moves $3.50 worth of fertility; ton of
beef, worth at the present high prices,
from $3.50 to $500 takes with it about
SIT worth Of richness, while a ton of
butter, worth today on the markets of
the world $500, takes with it only 40
cents worth of fertilizing ingredients,
and by providing those heterogeneous
foods that are necessary for greatest
butter production-alfalfa, COW peas,
soy beans fed in connection with ensi-
lage-returns to the land many times
this amount.
The Farmers Institute has been
sounding a warning of the declining
production of the farms of Illinois and
the dairy COW is now not only welcome,
but she is much in demand on the farms
of the northern and southern sections
of the state; the demand 30 greatly
exceeds the supply that cows of good
dairy breeding that are able to demon
strate their merit at the pail are COM
mandiDg greater prices than have
heretofore been known.
Dairymen in northern Illinois have
found that with alfalfa they can stop
the purchase of protein; that they can
keep the coss in perfect health and
vigor; that they can get the greatest
flow of milk the cows are capable of
giving; that they can and should feed
it every day in the year. beginning
early in spring by cutting it green and
soiling; by feeding dry alfalfa hay and
corn silage after frost comes or at any
time; that no other business tends to
40 ranidlv bujld nm the farm and when