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Show Utah Dairy Herd Association Issues Improvement Work Program Report By Lyman H. Rich. U S A C Extension Dairyman Eight Iron County dairy herds have completed official offi-cial dairy herd improvement work, the first association report ever issued. One hundred cows were enrolled the full year and completed 365 days under the testing program. pro-gram. The average production for the 100 cows was 9060 pounds of milk and 363 pounds of butterfat. These cows consumed an average of 2,487 pounds of gain which repre- sents only one-fourth of the feed nutrients required to produce the dairy products. The balance of the feed nutrients was supplied in good quality hay, silage, and pasture. Three of the eight herds were above 300 pounds per cow and not a single herd was under un-der 300 pounds. This speaks well for the dairymen because the average av-erage cow in the state produces only 250 pounds fat per year and this is 40 pounds above the national na-tional average. The Iron County average of 363 falls only 12 pounds short of the state average in the dairy herd improvement work. The state average av-erage was 9729 pounds of milk and 374 pounds of butterfat for 9400 cows. The Iron County tests were made under the direction of County Agent Stephen L. Brower, and supervisors are Roland A. Jensen of Cedar City, and M. Bleak Hyatt of Parowan Local Sponsors Two dairy herd improvement committees in Iron County sponsored spon-sored the testing program. Ross Sargent of Cedar City is chairman chair-man of the committee for the Cedar City area, and Ray Morris is chairman of the committee for the Parowan-Paragonah area. Both of these men feel very strongly that the success of dairying in Iron County is going go-ing to depend to a large extent on dairymen using the information informa-tion they obtain from the DHIA to improve their dairy herds, particularly par-ticularly to eliminate cull cows or the cows that are not paying for their feed in production. The dairymen who are members mem-bers of the LHIA In Iron County are taking advantage of the newest new-est development in the dairy industry in-dustry which had its beginning in Utah. All of the records are kept efficiently and correctly by use of the IBM system. Dr. Bliss H. Crandall, assistant director of the experiment station, is the only man in the United States who has been able to adapt DHIA records to the IBM system and at the present time in Utah not only Utah dairymen, but dairymen from a number of other western states, are taking advantage of this inexpensive and very efficient effi-cient record keeping procedure for the dairy testing program. It is expected that eventually all of the states will follow the pattern pat-tern developed in Utah in cow testing and record keeping. The DHIA program is under the direction direc-tion of the Federal Extension Service Ser-vice and the Bureau of Animal Industry at Washington, D. C. Any dairyman in Iron County who wishes to participate in the DHIA program may apply for enrollment en-rollment through his county agent or through his community communi-ty committeemen. |