OCR Text |
Show COW-TESTING ASSOCIATIONS Where Orga.ized a Decided Improvement Improve-ment Has Been Noted In Quality of Dairy Herds. (PreiFd for Um trailed tttaa DulKkctnMmt of Anoulturt.) The practice of Uniting cows K determine de-termine their milk and butter-fut production pro-duction and food ootiauinpthm by means of cow-testing awocbitionfl lias become wlde.spreud. There are now 452 associations of this kind in the United States, besides many In foreign countries. In mont casee each association associa-tion hag one tester and no more eows than can be well handled, but tliere are some very large ones and some that are much smaller than the staiKl-nrd. staiKl-nrd. Tlie theoretical number of members mem-bers In a cow-toating association is 2ft, which makes one number for the tester test-er to vltilt each working day of tlie month. A member of such an association associa-tion Is supiMd te have not more than 30 cows, as that makes a large day's work. If every member had that number, there would he 780 cows in the association, but lew of them bove that many. There Is no definite relation between the number of members In an association associa-tion and the number of cows owned, in California there bj one association that tests 4,000 oows and another that lewts 4,100, and the number of members mem-bers are, respectively, 43 and 100. Another An-other in the same state has 66 members mem-bers and only 1,430 cows; thee are )L2 associations In Calif ornla with over 1 " " i Testing Associations Uncover High Producers. '4,000 oows each. Ordinarily the Dumber Dum-ber of cows in an association runs from 800 to 500, the average lor the country coun-try being 42a The number of herds overage 24.8. To have more than one tester Is a California practice, and one association in that state bos three. In contrast to the large associations In California and a few eisewbere, there are some that ore quite small. One In Massachusetts has 9 members and 125 eows; another In Kansas lias 10 members and 85 oows ; and to Michigan there Is one with 4 herds and only 45 cowg. The use of co-operative eow-teetlng associations has resulted to great Improvement Im-provement In the quality of the dairy cows to the localities where they have been organized by reason of the sift-tog sift-tog out of the low producers and the discovery of good oows that might otherwise have been sacrificed. The United States Department of Agriculture collects statistics of all the oow-testlng associations and Issues Is-sues a directory of all those that ore active on July 1 each year. It also assists In the organization at associations, asso-ciations, working through the county ageot If there Is one in the community. |