OCR Text |
Show Herd Association Idea an Old One Danish Fanners Increased Milk Production 8,0 00 Pounds by Testing. ' WNU Service. Dairymen in Ohio accepted a lesson les-son from the dairymen of Denmark when they organized dairy herd improvement im-provement associations, or cow testing test-ing associations, as they are most commonly called. The forerunners of the modern Ohio herd improvement associations were the Kontrol societies of Den mark, organized 40 years ago. The Kontrol society, like the SO modern mod-ern Ohio dairy herd improvement associations, was formed to provide for a monthly visit of a tester The tester weighed the milk produced by each cow in the herd and sampled sam-pled it for butterfat testing. He also kept a record of feed consumed and computed production costs for each Individual cow In the herd. From these records, kept year after year, the dairymen of Denmark Den-mark were able to cull from their herds the poor cows and find and keep the good ones. So effective were the associations In Denmark that the country raised the average production per cow to 8,000 pounds of milk and 300 pounds of butter-fat. butter-fat. Average production of Ohio herds is about 5,000 pounds. Testing year In and year out with an eye to the low producing Individuals Indi-viduals and their elimination from all future pedigrees offers our only hope for continued breeding of useful use-ful dairy cattle. |