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Show IMPROVING THE DAIRY HERD THROUGH ASSOCIATIONS Every dairy herd needs a high class bull at its head if the herd is to be improved, im-proved, says the United States Department Depart-ment of Agriculture. For the dairyman who has a small herd and is short on finances, the cheapest way to obtain the use of first-class pure bred bulls is through work of a cooperative dairy bull association. A bull association is a farmers' organization or-ganization whose chief purpose is the breeding of better dairy cows through joint ownership, use, and systematic exchange ex-change of prepotent dairy bulls, of high-breeding ancestry. Improvement of the herd that may be expected through membership in such an organization organ-ization is discussed in farmers bulle-tain bulle-tain 1532-F, "Dairy Herd Improvement Through Cooperative Bull Associations," Associa-tions," just issued by the bureau of animal industry, United States Department De-partment of Agriculture. Through the system of transferring bulls from block to block, the bull association as-sociation makes it possible to keep the desirable bulls as long as they live or are fit for service. This enables a bull's daughters to come in milk and be tested while he is still owned by the association, and furnishes a means of determining which bulls are siring1 the high-producing daughters. The bulls that do not get satisfactory satisfac-tory daughters are disposed of. A study of the records of the daughters daugh-ters of bull-association bulls showed an average yearly mature production of 8071 pounds of milk and 342 pounds of butterfat production by 14.4 per cent. Some of the sires are very outstanding. outstand-ing. One sire, for instance, was mated with cows having an average yearly butterfat production of 347 pounds, yet - his seven daughters from these cows excelled their dams by 57 per cent in milk production and 44 per cent in production of butterfat. Much progress has been made by selecting se-lecting bulls on the records of their dams and granddams. The most rapid progress cannot come until dairy sires are selected on the production records of their daughters. A copy of the bulletin may be obtained ob-tained by writing to the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, Washing-ton, D. C. |