Milford chronicle., 1960-06-10
June Is Dairy Month
by DIR. w. R. Hesseltine
Extension Dairy Specialist
University of Delaware

June Dairy Month Is the annual
celebration when grateful nation
pays. tribute to COWS and the dairy
industry. The health and high lev
els of nutrition in our nation today
is attributed largely to milk and
milk products.
The dairy COW has supported hu-
man life since mans history was
recorded. For many thousands of
years the COW has converted the
forages of the world into a pro-
duct which is readily consumed by
humans. She has been content to
let man claim dog as his best
friend but the cows relationship to
man is probably much older and at
least as important as that Of the
dog.
When settlers first came to the
United States, they found no native
cattle. Records indicate that those
colonies which neglected to bring
cattle with them were soon dis
traught with disease and death. 1t
Is now usually recognized that
cows at jamestown enabled that
colony 10 survive.
Today the dairy business is
among the nations greatest indus
tries. 1t uses more trucks than any
other business. 1t is made up of
small business men buying mater
ials and equipment locally and sell
ing their product locally.
Much of the effort expended by
Init 10 III
countries In raising their standards
of living is devoted to establishing
and developing a dairy industry
and with good reason. The dairy
COW can exist under a wide temper
ature range. She can convert into
human food the forage crops un-
usable by the human stomach and
is also a source of meat after she
completes her usefulness as a milk
producer. She also provides lea
ther for shoes and other products.
Man has learned a lot about
cows. particularly in the last 200
years In 1855 Robert Bakewell,
an Englishman, recognized that
cows could be bred and developed
for specific purposes. Since then
this process has gone on at an ever
accelerating rate.
Milk production per COW has
steadily risen, making milk pro-
duction a more efficient process
each year. Competition among
dairymen to meet higher and high
er costs keeps each one striving
for higher production per COW and
greater efficiency. The consumer is
the ultimate benefactor since only
with such progress could he obtain
milk, cheese and ice cream pro-
ducts at such reasonable prices.
A good example of progress in
the dairy industry is artificial
breeding. About z million of the
nations 19 million dairy cows are
bred artifically to sires many miles
away. Thus many of the dairy
products we now consume were
literally made from "test-tube" an
imals. Many of our cows in Della
ware are being mated to sires kept
in Cary, Illinois, and owned by the
Curtiss Candy Company. A lot of
the fathers of Delaware's cows are
housed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
and owned comparatively.
When COW is to be bred, the
herd owner merely calls the local
inseminator who periodically re-
ceives the semen to use. The new
est method of keeping semen is in
liquid nitrogen stores at 3200 be-
low zero. Cows are sometimes mat
ed this way with sires that have
been dead several years. The same
sire may have as many as 10000
offspring
The dairy industry has thus
made excellent use of.the scientific
method in seIf-improvement. The
industry rs just as competitive as
1t Is scientific.
Most of Delaware's dairymen
have about $4,000 invested in land,
buildings, equipment and cows. In
1850 Delaware had about 1900
1900 dairymen and $4,000 cows
with an average production of $500
pounds of milk per cow per year.
Today Delaware has only about
1000 dairymen with about 10000
cows averaging $500 pounds per
cow.
Increased production per cow
will take care of the increasing de-
mands for more milk as the popu-
lation grows. The 10 million cows
now being milked in the United
States will have higher producing
offspring due to scientific breed
ing. feeding and management.
Ten years from now about Is and
a half million cows are expected to
supply the increased population
with dairy supplies. Without such
progress and continued efficiency,
dairy products would be either un-
available or much more expensive.