Stock and stalks

A Book for the Dairy Farmer
BY J. R. ROBERTS President Roberts Sanitary Dairy Lincoln and Sioux City
Henry Westfall, Sales Agent, 126 So. 11th Street Midwest Bldg. , Lincoln, Nebraska (All Rights Reserved)
Copyright, 1921 BY J. R. ROBERTS
STOCK AND STALKS
In writing this booklet I hope to put into it information valuable to the average farmer who keeps cows. I make no claim for this little book as an addition to dairy science. It is rather a subtraction. I mean that I have been careful to include only the most essential information. Where a great mass of scientific data is gathered, it takes discrimination to distinguish between matters of great and less importance. To do this discriminating and to point out the most essential things, as I see them, is the purpose of this undertaking.
Those who wish more detailed information can easily find it prepared by those who have studied this matter in detail. I have not. In my experience in the dairy business I have tried to use to the best and most practical advantage the scientific knowledge that I could acquire from others. My experience has all been an effort to apply science to business. It has been a business experience, not one of research and investigation. There is much that I have found to be of no particular use to me, but there are many things that I have found to be of great importance.
Science digs out facts, figures, data, knowledge, or whatever it may be called. To take facts of science and make use of them in business is one thing which Webster’s dictionary calls an art. This booklet, then, may not be classed as science for the writer is not so very scientific; it is not in itself a work of art for the writer is not strong on artistic ability; but is written on the art of keeping cows and paying the feed bills.
Stock and Stalks
Agriculture as a science is comparatively new. It is not like civil engineering, for instance, which is taught about alike in all places, and much of it the same as was taught a generation ago. Since I can remember most of what is now known about dairy science has been discovered. It is not surprising, therefore, that as the various ideas and doctrines come out they have both adherents and opponents. It takes time to clarify a situation and to prove what is the right conclusion. Some blame our agricultural colleges for not knowing more and knowing it sooner, and for spreading what we now know to have been in some cases misinformation. But the course taken was really the only one possible. Experiment stations have to try out a lot of theories in order to find which are wrong and which are right. At present there are many things still unknown and much difference of opinion. If the discussion which follows seems to differ in some respects with recognized authorities, I still think that I may be right; and if wrong, I claim as good a right as any one else to make mistakes.