T

HE slices of bread in the full dinner pail are to be spread thicker with butter. The pailcarriers have not complained, but American dairymen have become ambitious and entered on a campaign of education to the end that every milch cow must show a certificate of culture or be ignominiously Oslerized.

The plan is absurdly simple; a set of scales and a notebook are the only requirements, yet by their use it is proposed to double the nation's production of an article of daily diet already more valuable than any crop except corn and equal to one-third of all the cereals grown in all the states and territories. Every twelve months the American milch cows add $800,000,000 to the wealth of the nation. Double the production and the value of the corn crop will be left far behind.

But, it is exclaimed, no matter how cultured the American cow may become it cannot thrive on scales and notebooks, there must be something else demanded. Not at present, for, as a prominent New York dairyman remarked before a Farmers' Institute last winter: "Weighing a cow's milk may not make her give more, but it may cause you to put a better one in her place and so put more money in your pocket. Get a set of scales, weigh each cow's milk and keep a record of it the year through and you will be surprised at the results. I venture to say some of the cows you have been calling good ones will not be found in your herd the next year." Herein is the hint of Oslerization, which is the secret of the plan.

Confession being good for the soul, it must be admitted the plan is not original, but is borrowed from Danish dairymen. The first dairy testing association in

Denmark was founded in 1895 for the purpose of ascertaining and, if possible, increasing the productiveness of the herds. The dairymen realized such work would be costly for the individual, but by co-operation the expense would be slight. The only way of obtaining the desired information was to keep careful records of the amount and quality of the milk produced, together with the value of the feed for each cow. To accomplish this the association engaged a man to visit the farms of the members at regular intervals each month to weigh and test the milk, the dairymen in the meantime keeping an accurate record of the feed used between visits. At the end of the year the tester reported and the unproductive cows were cut out from the herds.

Good results were not slow in coming. It was found, for instance, that one cow gave 10,183 pounds of milk at a cost of $63, while another gave only 4,098 pounds at a cost of $50. The moral was obvious, the lesson quickly learned. In the thirteen years since that first association was formed the average yearly yield per cow in Denmark has been raised from 5,452 pounds of milk, averaging 3.3 per cent butter fat, to 7,776 pounds of milk, averaging 3.52 per cent butter fat. Today instead of one association with its few cows there are over 450 associations, with over 170,000 cows. The set of scales and the notebook have been vindicated many times.

America was slow in learning the lesson, but today cow culture clubs are being organized in a dozen states and regular tests are being made in twice as many. The experience of New York shows the variance which exists between animals of the same herd. That state leads the nation in the number of milch cows and the quantity and value of dairy products, yet heretofore there has been little or no symmetry in herds. For in

stance, in one section it was found that 500 cows averaged a yield of 3,576 pounds of milk per cow in a year; while in another section two herds, one of forty-five and the other of forty-three cows, averaged 2,771 pounds and 4,469 pounds per cow respectively; a difference of 67,512 pounds of milk in favor of the smaller herd, or 1,798 pounds per cow. One small dairy of ten animals gave a total of 47,885 pounds, or 4,7881⁄2 pounds per cow, while another of twelve animals gave a total of only 22,554 pounds, or 1,879 pounds per cow average. Here was a difference of 2,909 pounds an animal, the ten giving more than twice as much as the other twelve. In another. section was a dairyman getting something over 127,000 pounds of milk from twenty-six cows and a neighbor milking forty-five cows to get a little more than 124,000 pounds, about 3,000 pounds of milk less from the forty-five than the other secured from the twenty-six cows. The cost of feed and care was practically the same in all cases. The conclusion was that the unproductive herds con

tained too many animals fit only for Oslerizing on the altar of flesh-eating.

This system of cow testing has at last spread all over America, culminating in Iowa-the second dairy state of the union-where a prize of $5,000 is offered the most productive butter-cow in the state. Cow culture clubs are being organized the first two sprang up in, Waterloo, a bustling little city which has often set the rest of the state a good example-and a systematic campaign is now on to increase the butter yield. What this means is easier understood when it is learned that already Iowa ships approximately 100,000,000 pounds of butter outside its borders every year, the surplus product, over and above. home consumption, of its 1,550,000 milch cows of an aggregate farm value of $47,428,000, second only to New York, with 1,789,000 cows of the value of $59,932,000. Each of these cow culture clubs is made up of twenty-six farmers. The tester, a specialist tester, a specialist in the business of dairying, visits each of the members once a month, spending one day at each farm.

He weighs the milk from each cow, tests it to see how much butterfat and how much butter the milk yields, and keeps the record for a year, together with the record of the weight and value of the food each cow is given. At the end of the year the record of each cow in each farmer's herd is figured up by the tester. If a cow has yielded butter worth $50 and consumed feed worth $60 the farmer is advised to sell her to the butcher. If, on the other hand, a cow yields butter worth $150 after eating feed which costs $75, her name is written in capitals and she is pampered and petted.

These clubs are to be assisted by dairy demonstration trains and dairy days at farmers' institutes and chautauquas. Iowa has fallen in line with other states in making a state appropriation to further dairy instruction and interests, the legislature which recently adjourned giving $10,000 to the work of the next two years, putting Iowa in line with Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minne

sota and Illinois. The bulk of this money is to be used to pay the expenses of special trains-under the direct supervision of Prof. P. G. Holden, in charge of the successful corn and oats gospel trains, and a corps of dairy experts from the state agricultural college. Farmers will be invited to the trains and lectures and object lessons given in the latest and most approved methods of dairying.

In order further to stimulate interest cash prizes are to be awarded at the end of the year to the cows which show the best result of this culture crusade. Mr. W. W. Marsh of Waterloo set the ball to rolling by offering $1,000 for the best butter producers and within a short time it is confidently expected this will be increased to $5,000, in addition to innumerable silver cups and livestock and machinery prizes. The entries close August 15th, any milch cow in Iowa being eligible, with the prospects that the yields of 150 or 175 pounds of butterfat per cow in a year, with which dairymen have

terfat in a year, or possibly even a higher average.

The fact has been published time and time again that the average cow of the United States does not produce yearly more than 150 pounds of butterfat; also that any cow which produces less than 200 pounds of butterfat yearly is a loss to her owner. But heretofore dairymen have not known the productiveness of their herds. Herein lies the efficiency of the scales and notebook; a year from now there will be no excuse for the 150-pound or even the 200-pound cows remaining, to cost more than they produce.

heretofore been satisfied, will be so far surpassed in the competition as to establish a new record from which the cultured cows will never recede.

The fact is, the dairying industry has needed just such a stirring up, for America's milch cows have never, except in isolated instances, done anything like their full duty. New York has led the nation with an annual yield of approximately 775,000,000 gallons of milk, with Iowa second with approximately 550,000,000 gallons; while the annual value of the dairy products of each of six states has exceeded $25,000,000, the honor roll being: New York, $55,474,155; Pennsylvania, $35,860,110; Illinois, $29,638,619; Iowa, $27,516,870; Wisconsin, $26,779,721; Ohio, $25,383,627. Each year the dairies of the nation have produced a billion and a half pounds of butter, but the total, immense as it is, might have been far larger. The cow culture. clubs from California to New York are confidently expected to show results which will mean the cutting out of non-productive animals and the formation of herds each member of which will yield an average of, say, 275 or 300 pounds of but

The butterfat record is several times the amount which is considered self-supporting for the average cow. At present it is held by a Holstein owned by Mr. H. A. Moyer of Syracuse, Grace Fayne 2nd Homestead, which produced 28.44 pounds of butterfat in seven days. But a week's production is not now considered a fair test of a cow's dairy ability. Nothing short of a record for the full year will test the staying quality. The world's record for yearly production is

GRACE FAYNE 2ND HOMESTEAD.

in a week.