Middletown transcript., 1915-02-20
sIDDIETOwH, DEL. FEB. 30, 1915
ROBBER COWS


the fact is old enough, although this
name for it may be new.
A member of the Levy Court the |
other day said the milch cows at Farm
hurst used to ''eat their heads off," So
the sooner Delaware farmers learn
Just what a 'rObber COW" is, the bet
ter for their pocketbooks.
How careful we often are in life to
guard against the small dangers and
how negligent in our precautions
against the big ones. Absurdly fearful
Of little wetting, or a trihe too much
fresh air, but thinking nothing of eat
ing every day improper amounts of
badly cooked food, and of drinking
water alive with typhoid or other dead
Iy germsl Many people never can get
over the habit of saving at the spigot
and losing at the bunghOle.
Ditto you farmers! A weasel or a
thief in your chicken house, and you're
aroused. A dog among your sheep, and
you get your gun and bait your traps.
You even gun for the canny crow (yOur
friend as science has conclusively
proved merely because he occasionally
lunches off your newly planted or
sprouting corn as pay for the valuable
service he renders in killing destructive
vermin.
Yet despite all this, numbers of our
Delaware farmers actually lodge and
board robbers from one years end to
the other!
They would hardly thus Hospitality
treat some sheep-killing cur that had
raided their Cotswolds or their South
downsI Nor would they call their
chicken stealing neigbor in and treat
him to hot supper with an invitation
to call again.
Yet, we repeat, some of them, al
least one third of them, are doing some
thing else quite as absurd, when yeal
in and year out, they keep cows tina
are just as certainly rObbing them al
do the dogs or the night visitors at theil
hen houses!
Wise farmers in this country ar,
awakening to this fact, and are follow
ing the example of little Denmark
which in the last 20 years has formet
800 Cow Testing Associations or coop
erative clubs for recording the feed ant
production of individual cows as
means of securing an increased amour
of milk and butter fat, and improving
the herd by getting rid of the poor pro
ducers.
In the last five years lbs of thes
Associations have been formed, an
the results in wedding out unproftabl
cows and building up herds of good pro
ducers have been remarkable.
The Government Year Book for 191
shows that in one herd as result G
such testing % cows were sold off, an
in another herd the monthly cost {
feeding was cut down from $6.O5 |
$4.63 per COW.
Another Cow Testing Association s r,
cords prove that in four years the a.
erage annual profit on each COW hs
doubled, while the average return f,
each dollar spent for feed had il
creased from $1.64 to $1.9s.
Prof. H. H. Kildee, of the Iowa Sta
College, gives the following marvelol
results of a herd in the Benson Co
Testing Association, wherein f
three years such records were ke
and the poor cows weeded out.
In 1911, the average milk per COW W
5,665 pounds and 2O7.7 butter fat, yiel
ing net income of $22.12, and t
largest net income COW in the herd W
354.22.
In 1912, the average milk was 20
pounds, and butter fat 251.O, net
come 1886, largest net income c,
$1O6.sO
In 1918, the average milk was 81
pounds, 341.9s butter fat, net incol
$76 and two largest net income co
each $144.
In other words, in three years, /
average amount of milk and butter
had almost doubled, and the aver,
net income of each COW had hadincre
ed $50 per cent?
At least one third of the milch CT
in Delaware are ''robber" COWS do
their best to eat their owners into
poorhOusel
ANY wonder farming doesn't pa
Why not form Cow Testing Asso
tion here in this section through
,oancv of va,,y live paach Illo.,