MAKING A MARGIN
The most enthusiastic advocates of alfalfa are dairymen. The market price of milk is quite well fixed and the price of butterfat at the creameries remains, in the different seasons, pretty much the same year by year. Hence, the problem of increasing his financial returns must depend upon the dairyman’s being able to increase the volume of his product or to decrease the cost, or both. If he is selling butterfat at a profit of five cents and he cannot force the price any higher, it is the sensible thing to decrease the cost per pound and thereby enlarge his profit.
The dairyman who buys all his feed has but little margin. To raise enough clover calls for considerable land. Alfalfa will yield a large bulk of excellent feed from a few acres of well treated land. For profit he must raise more feedstuff and buy less. The Kansas station reported that with common scrub cows fed on alfalfa hay and Kafir corn meal it was possible to produce butterfat at a cost of seven cents a pound.