cattle it might be different. But I think in Mr. Foster's case the sensible thing is to get rid of them as soon as possible. by taking your milk to a factory as by selling it? Mr. Foster-There would not be a great deal of difference. My milk, the total production of my milk, taking out what we use in the house, netted me $1.35 per hundred, and there is the expense of retailing to come out of that. It would not cost so much to take it to the creamery and you would have the skimmed milk left to feed to Mr. Foster-In connection with that I will say that I have a heifer in my stable now that has disappointed me for the last three months since she came in the first time, but I will keep her until next year. But a boughten cow must not disappoint me. Question-What breed of cows do the hogs and calves. you keep? Mr. Foster-I have no special preference for any breed. I want the cow that will do the work. It would be nicer to have a whole row of cows all alike in your stable, but you cannot buy them at reasonable figures. At the same time, I sold the prettiest animal in my stable the first of this month for $25.00. I bought her for her beauty and I sold her for her laziness. Question-Do you raise heifer calves? Mr. Foster-Yes, from my best cows, all of them. I discard some before they calve the first time, others I try, -some one year, some two, some not more than three months. They satisfy me in that time. I do not claim to be infallible, but business is business. Question-Where do you sell your milk and what do your cows net you? Mr. Foster—I retail my milk in the village. My cows last year, gross receipts, netted me a trifle over $100.00 per cow, and I sold milk at three and one-half cents per quart. We made butter of what was left, that is taking out what we used ourselves. Last year I was reckless. Those twenty cows this year will net me $1,000.00 and I hire all my work and will not be at home more than two-thirds of the time. Mrs. Howie-The reason you expect to make so much money this year is because when you are gone two-thirds of the time Mrs. Foster is running the business. A Member-I believe it, if his wife is like Mrs. Howie. Question-How do you remove your manure? Mr. Foster-I do not have a space wide enough behind the cows to get a wagon in there, so I remove mine with a wheel-barrow. meet ings are historical in a way and the COW. The Chairman-I think there are fourteen or fifteen hands up. the gentleman how many Question-You do not buy your to replace? feed? Mr. Foster-I buy all my grain feed. Mr. Bradley-He has twenty cows on thirty acres. Mr. Foster-I have sold in the last year eight cows. In this retail milk business you have to keep up your production and must have just so much Question-Would you make as much milk per day. I have had to go out opportunity to buy from my home ele vator something that they cannot sell ordinarily and that nobody else wants. There is a lot of buckwheat screen and buy four. From now on I have it, but it must come out. I have an young stock enough to take the place of all I shall discard, which will be in the next year not over three, unless some have accidents. Question-How many silos have ings composed largely of pigeon grass you? Mr. Foster-I have two. One is fourteen feet in diameter and the other is twelve feet and thirty-five feet high. The large one I feed from in the winter and the small one in the summer time. Mr. built? and sorrel seed, all kinds of weed seeds, and about one-fourth broken grains of buckwheat. I mix this with one-fifth corn and grind it up. I take one hundred pounds of bran, one hundred and fifty pounds of grain screenings, one hundred pounds of buckwheat Purvis-How are your silos middlings, and thirty-three and thirty Mr. Foster-They are stave silos. Mr. Purvis-How much does it cost per cow on an average to keep these cows a year? Mr. Foster-Last year I bought $375 worth of feed, that is, grain for the horses, cows and young stock. I attempted to figure that out, but so much of my labor bill goes into the production of feed I gave it up. Question-How much grain per day do you feed your cows on an average, including the grain that is in the silage? three hundredths pounds of gluten feed, and then I figure the elements that go to make that up and deduce my ration from that. Mr. Reese--Did I understand the gentleman to say that he gets three and one-half cents per quart for his 4 per cent. milk? Mr. Foster-They do not limit me to any per cent. I try to average 4 per cent. as nearly as possible. Mr. Reese-You are really getting about $1.12 a can, thirty-two quarts to the can? Mr. Foster-Yes, sometimes I sell very nearly all of the milk. Sometimes I have some left to make into butter. We do not have enough to pay to make butter systematically. Mr. Foster-I have not estimated the grain in the silage. I feed 6.5 pounds. That is my standard ration. It is a ration at will feed two-thirds and sometimes not over half, the cows; the others vary above and be low it. For the cow that slacks up in her milk, or when it is time for her to go dry, I slack off in the feed. The cow that is doing well and is fresh gets anything she wants. Question-Is that 6.5 pounds for they have to the city and they take every day during the year? Mr. Foster-Well, no. That is the ration I made out on February 11th and I am still feeding it, but I shall probably change that very soon. That is what my standard ration is. The Chairman-An average ration? Mr. Foster-It is a winter ration. Question-What is this ration composed of? Mr. Foster-I am ashamed to tell you some things about that ration I feed my cows, because you won't like Mr. Reese-Wouldn't it pay you better to run that milk through a separator, if it tests better than 4 per cent., and keep the skimmed milk at home on the farm? That is where I think a great many farmers make their mistake. They send every pound of milk away from the farm just that much. Now, I have lived around here all my life. I am a young man, but I notice this much, that the men who are shipping milk have the poorest stables, the poorest farms and the poorest barns, and the men that are making butter from twenty-five cents a pound up have got money in the bank and generally have a plaster on their neighbor's farm. Mr. Foster-The gentleman's posi tion is well taken. I am living on a rented farm, very limited in size, and I do not care now to change my system of farming until I know what I want. That is why I took to peddling milk. Prof. Henry-The gentleman at my lett has put this thing so well I want to clinch it. It is my privilege to be in a position where I can be helpful to Wisconsin farmers. I have been closely watching for some time the influence of the city upon the farming radius,—its effect upon the population as to their happiness, their bank accounts, and the condition of the farms, etc. I want to say to you farmers who are shipping milk to Chicago, or, in this county, more likely to Milwaukee, that in the end you will not be prosperous, the farms will not be prosperous, and that many a farmer is now shipping milk into Milwaukee or Chicago who would much better be patronizing a creamery. I know farmers who are shipping to Chicago and get ting $700.00 a month cash for their milk. They are poor, hard up all the time, and the farms are running down. Send your milk to a creamery unless they will pay you more in the city. Do not cut each others' throats. This is a cut-throat business. Mr. Ezra Goodrich-I can knock the creamery idea into a cocked hat. Skim your milk at home and have it sweet and good, ship your cream and feed the rest to the calves. I get $1.50 for the cream from an eight-gallon can of milk, and no creamery on God's earth can do better. Mr. Foster-We never had a creamery in our town until this year, and the first of January I made up my mind that I was going to the creamery and I would raise the price of milk from three and one-half cents to five cents and if the people did not want the milk I would practice the other system of dairying and I would have the skimmed milk left to feed to the stock. Question-What time do you have your heifers come in? Mr. Foster-At a year and threequarters. They sometimes run to two. Question-Is six thousand pounds of milk your standard? Mr. Foster-That is my minimum. They have run as high as ten thousand pounds, as high as a little over eleven thousand pounds. Mr. Reese-Do you test your milk by any system? Mr. Foster-No, I do not. Mr. Reese Then those cows may be giving all skimmed milk and you not know it. Mr. Foster-They may. The herd will average 4 per cent. milk. Question-You are not getting down to what your individual cow will produce. You are looking for quantity and not quality. Mr. Foster-My position is different from what it would be if I were selling that milk to a creamery, because in that case I would sell on a butter-fat basis. I cannot sell milk entirely on a butter-fat basis. There is no call for it. I try to suit my customers. Mr. Hodgson-Where do you get 4 per cent. cows? Mr. Foster-It is easy to get cows giving 4 per cent. milk, because up and down the road our neighbors' milk averages 4 per cent., but I require a and then I look after the test aftercow to give a certain quantity of milk wards. I must have the quantity. do not want a cow that gives less than six thousand pounds. I Mr. Arnold-When you commence taking milk to a creamery it does not pay to guess at the test of the milk. You can determine how much the test is and go by the test. Mr. Foster-The only test then is the butter content, regardless of the amount of milk. Mr. Reese-If you are going to ship milk you want quantity and if you get anywhere over 3 per cent. you are safe so far as the health department is concerned, but for men that are getting down to the individual COW and want to know what she is doing, they do not want to run the business on his basis. Mr. Foster-Out in the country, a and he says he must have the silo in order to have cheap milk. He built two silos on that rented farm. Mr. Foster-The material cost seventy-five dollars apiece for the two silos. few miles from my place, is a small staves. A good many people object cheese factory, operated by German to silos on account of the cost. Here farmers. They do not buy milk by is Mr. Foster milking twenty cows the test. A man would be a fool to go to work and furnish them Guernsey or Jersey 5 per cent. milk. If I were a patron of that factory I would get the biggest milkers I could and I would not care a cent what the test was. I try to fit my product for the market that I have. If I took my product to a creamery, the fat content would be the only test. If I took it to that factory, I would want the quantity, but would not care about the quality, for they don't apparently. that Mr. Reese-How long has cheese factory been in business? Mr. Foster-I think about four years. Mr. Reese-Then, according to your theory, if you brought skimmed milk it would not make any difference. Will they take skimmed milk? Mr. Foster-No, they won't. The Chairman-There are hundreds of cheese factories in Wisconsin where they do not test their milk. Mr. Foster-I think they are very foolish. The Chairman-In regard to the silo. Why do you have the ensilage higher on the outside than in the center? Mr. Foster-Well, when you stack hay you tread the center and leave the outside loose, so that when the stack settles it will draw in at the sides, but when silage settles you want it to crowd against the walls so as to exclude the air, and the way to produce that result is to reverse the hay stacking process. Mr. Purvis-Do you keep a man in the silo all the time? Mr. Foster-Yes. Mr. Reese-How long have they been standing? Mr. Foster-Three years. Mr. Buskirk-Do you have any dif ficulty with frost in the silos? Mr. Foster-To some extent. In the coldest weather I put a cheap, light cover across the silo, about six feet above the top of the silage where I am feeding, and then by covering this over with straw and planer shavings and opening the door into the stable the frozen silage soon thaws out if scattered around the surface. In our coldest weather it will freeze some around the walls, but by digging it away and scattering it over the silo it thaws out before the next feeding. Mr. Utter-Would you advise a farmer on his own farm to build a stave silo? Mr. Foster-Yes, sooner than go without one. If a man going into northern Wisconsin would build no house until he could build a first-class one, he would be a long time without. If you put up a cheap silo, use it for a few years. The seventy-five dollars will come back the first year. Then you have the lumber left. I say by all means build a silo. If you cannot build a good one, build two cheap ones. Have the walls tight. The Chairman-There are a good many silos built of stone and brick and they are better than the stave The Chairman-His silo is built of silos. CORN BREEDING AND IMPROVEMENT. W. H. STEVENSON, Champaign, III. One familiar with our great cereal dress you today, on the assumption crop and who has carefully studied type and quality in corn and their re lation to production cannot but feel and realize that an unfortunately large number of farmers, in this and other states, raise corn inferior in type and breeding. The result is a lessened yield per acre and financial loss. If the thoughtful corn grower will look with observing eyes he will note two facts. First, that of all the varieties and types of corn which he finds but few are creditable, or even good specimens of the corn grower's skill. Second, that few articles are written on corn breeding and improve ment. There are an almost endless number, however, relative to corn production considered from almost every other view point. that a knowledge and application of the principles of breeding are as important and fundamental to success in producing desirable types of corn as in bringing our various breeds of live stock to a more perfect development. Within recent years it has been found that the work of improvement in plant life and in animal life can be conducted along similar lines by simi lar methods. To the great breeders of the past are the stockmen of the present indebted for the choice animals in their flocks and herds. What would be the type and quality of our live stock today had not Bakewell, Collings, Bates, Booth, Cruikshank, Webb, and other breeders, during the past century and a half, studied animal life and form, and through careful selection, mating and breeding, pursued with persistency during many years, laid such an admirable foundation for our modern live stock husbandry? There are many men today, in every state, who have toiled long and diligently to increase the average yield of corn per acre, but there have ever been few-very few-among the number, who have endeavored to accomSuccessive generations of sheep and plish this important work by system-cattle, upon a thousand hills, in both atically breeding corn. We can readi- hemispheres, have borne the impress ly understand why this is so. It has of these master-breeders' handiwork, been comparatively easy to investi- in feature, form, quality, and other gate improved methods of planting characteristics. and cultivating, but what time and patience and study have been required to breed aright! And yet, by reason of its inherent capacity for variation, corn improvement opens to every intelligent farmer a large and exceedingly fertile field for practicable and profitable investigation and work. Corn sustains such a vital relation to the agricultural interests of our country and the world, owing to its value as a food, both for animals and men, that its breeding along practical and scientific lines is a matter of the greatest importance. Therefore, I ad And now we believe that in the fullness of time the day has arrived, when the reward is as certain and as great for those who will give of their energy and time to the improvement of our farm crops as that which crowned the efforts of the pioneer in live stock improvement. It is true that all work in plant breeding demands, in a measure, scientific operations. But the breeding and improvement of corn is of such great importance and can be carried on so successfully and profitably by the intelligent, enthusiastic farmer that we |