Show BENEFITS OF COW T ESTING box elder county farmers should road read this article and profit by it ed N S FRENCH A man here in california who says he e owns two strings of common cows wants to know whether it will pay to give 3 5 a year and board the man while doing the work to hane hae his cows tested for butterfat butter fat in their milk lie he being obliged to weigh the milk while the test is being made he says that his checks from the creamery are all that could well be expected and seems to think that it Is simply a scheme to give some idler an easy job in a way that is what it Is for few men are willing to do something for nothing in this most commercial age and the laborer Is said to be worthy of his hire but as aa a paying proposition there ai are e very few things that will pay the dairyman any better whether he be in california or maine or in any part of that vast region between and whether lie he be milking one ane cow one string or 10 strings A string of cows on the pacific coast by the way is what ahat one man is supposed to be able to milk and care for generally about 25 true the dairyman may buy scales and a babcock tester and test his own cows but very few of them seem inclined to do it seemingly preferring to remain in it a blissful state of ignorance nor as to what any or all of their cows are leally doing hence the formation of these operative cooperative co testing associations in many dairy regions clear across the continent and in some foreign countries as well this has been found by actual exper lencer ienco to be the cheapest and best wa way that this work can be done As to its benefits there are very few who have once tried it who are ever willing to go back to the old guesswork happy go lucky plan knowledge is power power means wealth sometimes in big figures but more often and almost always in the saving of smaller ones which soon grow into the larger this man has perhaps 50 cows and at least five of them are merely star boarders occupying room and eating teed feed that the other cows pay for this is only a guess but a pretty safe one and it is less than half odthe of the percentage of f nonpaying non paying cows which have been founds in most herds in the east through the operative cooperative co testing association in a herd of 20 cows seven were tested out by the illinois agricultural college and the remaining 13 brought in a little more money in a year than the whole 20 had before hundreds of similar instances have been truthfully reported where these testing associations have been doing work therefore in a general way it is very sate safe to figure that five cows out of 50 will be faunl in the dead beat class now even it if the total expense of a years weighing and testing is 25 instead ot of 3 5 will not the saving in feed alone more than repay this expense it if it will not then two and two will not make tour four there are many other things which generally come through joining one ol of toese testing associations not the least east of which is the friendly spirit of competitive rivalry among its membership ber ship which ultimately leads to the buying of better and possibly full blood dairy bred cows to re ploce thosa which have been proven worse than worthless as cream producers very few men will Ilesi hesitate tate to dispose of a nonpaying non paying cow il if they can be convinced that she is in that class it Is ignorance alone that makes so many poor teat pullers bullers keep on milking poor cows there is often a spirit of getto get to gether in these testing associations which results in the mutiel agreement of all to unite in raising the same breed of pure bred dairy stock finally resulting in the formation of 0 some sort of a breeding society an arrangement i ran gement which has proven of great value in every community wh where ere it has been worked wo ked out far registered stock is slowly but bu t most surely aurely and constantly increasing and as aa it eften costs but little more to ship a carload a long ong distance than it does dousto to ship one or two to a locality where a load ot of the desired breed can be found within driving distance of the one shipping station is a very welcome thing to a prospective buyer owing mostly to the different notions as to what really is the best breed such communities are rather scarce in the united states but in many parts of the old world as it is generally called the great advantages of 0 such joining together in breeding and raising the same kind 0 of stock is well understood and is of great benefit to both buyers and sellers as it also is in this country in the few places where custom has caused its adoption now one of these cow testing societies may naturally and easily become the nucleus and starter for this joining together in the raising of the same kind of stock whether it be cows horses hogs or I 1 poultry to the great ultimate benefit ot of buyer seller and all concerned in union there is strength then what better plan can the individual adopt than to thus join with his neighbors in an effort to know whether he has good cows or bad ones if bad as they very likely are to also unite with them in getting better ones since the above was written I 1 have been informed of au an instance that well illustrates this tact fact A rancher here all farms are arc ranches in california had a few acres which lie he could irrigate this was sown to alfalfa and the hay fed to nine common cows COIAs while hile the rest of the land was devoted devoted to raising wheat barley or oats for hay for his horses and mules in the good old way long prevalent here in the san joaquin valley at first the cows were nvere not mot considered of much account but when the cream v wagon agon came daily for the cream and the semimonthly semi checks from the butter factory regularly came in and were found as bankable as warehouse receipts for wheat ye rancher began to wish for more alfalfa and more cows A young friend from the east who bad taken the short ourse course c pt at an eastern agricultural college was visiting there for the winter so he borrowed a babcock tester and started testing the milk of the cows just lor for practice as he expressed it the result was that two of the best looking cows of the nine were sold to a local butcher and said the rancher laughingly that creamery tester never knew the difference but gave me just as much for the cream from the seven cows as lie he had for the nine of course he did he was buying butterfat butter fat not buttermilk the writer well remembers when the only way to tell whether a cow was a butter cow or a cheese cow as they then were classed was by setting each cows a separate pan and churning tho the cream separately it if there was any cream which was not always the case and now when these modern appliances make mahe it so easy for one to tell what the cows are doing it almost a sin not to use them so by all means join a testing association whenever er and Nilie wherever rever the chance is offered national dairy magazine |