Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 5, February 2, 1884. / A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside

by Various

We cut short our notes of the discussions somewhat, to make room for Mr. Smith’s instructive essay on

NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITIES.

So long as it is true that the average yield, per cow, in milk that is taken to the factories is less rather than more than 3,000 pounds per season, and so long as it is true that there are dairymen whose cows yield from 4,000 to 5,000 pounds each per season, it will be easy to make it appear there are neglected opportunities on the part of most dairymen which, if availed of, would greatly augment the annual yield, and consequently make larger the profits.

One of the fundamental truths in stock-raising, and in profitable milk production, is, that it takes a given amount of food to support the animal’s existence in such a way that it will simply maintain its status; and that growth in flesh or yield in milk, above an evenly balanced existence, must come from the food given to cause an increase of weight in flesh, fat, or milk products. Hence, all the profit must come from that excess, and is large or small just in proportion as the animal is capacitated to utilize and digest it, within the bounds of healthy, judicious feeding. So that farmer was sound who, when he fed up to the very verge of that limit, and was told by a skeptic that he did not believe high feeding paid, replied he was only sorry that his cows could not healthfully digest more. The capital invested in the cows, in the soil, in the barns and stables, in the care and time devoted to milking and waiting on them, is very nearly the same, whether they produce 3,000 pounds each per season, or 5,000 pounds. At first it may be granted that if a farm is stocked to its capacity in feeding a herd of 3,000-pound cows, that some outside food must be imported from other soil to enable the same herd to yield 5,000 pounds each. But the enriching of the manure through high feeding, and the consequent enriching of the land, will soon obviate the necessity of the importation of outside food. If this is not true, I admit that my opinion is based on false premises; and that the opponents of high feeding have the best of the argument, as well as a majority of the disciples, and a majority of the thinly-covered bones of the so-called dairy stock of the State. In support of the idea that there is an added value to the manure through high feeding, it may be stated that there are many places in the Eastern States in which in estimating the earnings of the cow each year, that the milk, or butter and cheese, the calf and the pork are not only counted, but $10 per well-fed cow is added for the increased value she has put upon the soil, deposited it in a bank that never breaks. What is true of the old East is fast becoming true of the soil of the older settled portions of Wisconsin. To augment the productive capacity of a given number of acres, that will now support in semi-starvation a given number of cows, to a point in fertility that will add 2,000 pounds of milk per annum to each cow, milk worth, say $20, is to have the funds in hand to pay the sum of $400 as interest on the added value to an ordinary farm of eighty acres that is made to well keep twenty cows, instead of keeping them in the usual way. Four hundred dollars will pay 5 per cent interest per annum on an added value of $100 per acre to the farm. This can be done without adding a cow to the herd. All done by a simple expansion, through better use of the capital already in the hands of many who work on the semi-starvation plan.

The very first neglected opportunity of the mass of farmers is, that they do not see, and do not make much effort to see, that there is a better way than to plow, and plow, and plow, seldom seed down, keep a few head of spindling cows, mostly to give birth to spindling calves, that by a stretch of the imagination may be called cows when five or six years old; sell such cows, instead of selling butter and cheese to buy their clothes and groceries, sell hay to buy their whisky, and their farms by the bushel to pay for them if in debt, or to add some improvements in buildings if they are not. It would be useless to further describe them—they are not here, as they never go to dairy conventions, or even to county agricultural meetings or annual fairs; and so any rebuke of their methods would not reach their ears. Let them pass; the chief regret for their fate being that their name is legion, and that they seem to be beyond the reach of mercy.

The next class, and the one for which this association has much missionary work to do, is the one that has shown some signs of progress; that is still in unbelief of the radical truth, but yet seems to be uttering the invocation of doubting Thomas, of old. The most marked neglect of opportunity by this class is in not accepting the truth alluded to previously, that it pays to transform 2,500 and 3,000-pound cows into 4,000 and 5,000-pound ones, through the process of more generous, and better paying feeding. Many of this class know that a paying flow of milk comes only from food judiciously given; but who have not yet learned the programme by which such food can be ever on hand, or do not possess the intelligent enterprise to put forth the means to obtain it. As this is, largely, the hopeful class, we may well pray for their growth in dairy grace, in the knowledge of the truth, as it is exemplified in the reliable experience of the few saints in the business, who know how to make good common cows earn $50 and $60, and more, each, per annum.

Observation and my factory books for a series of years, teach that persons of this class start out well in the spring, and have cows that maintain the flowing stream for awhile, so that the four-and-five-thousand pound yield would be obtained if they did not suffer it to come to grief, by not providing means to hedge against the immediate and consequent influences of the first serious check in the supply of palatable and easily digested food in the pastures. This is the great fatality of the whole business—a tolerated calamity as we may call it, for it endures a lapse that can not afterward be made good, the same season. It is to the paying yield of the cow what an untimely frost is to an unmatured corn crop. It is my firm belief that this is the great sin of the medium good dairyman of this and other dairy States,—the cause of the low average earnings of the cows; the reason why so many dairymen work so cheaply; the promoter of infidelity in the mind of the dairyman as to whether he has not made a mistake in entering upon the dairy business at all; in short, it is the chief “neglected opportunity” to get upon the highway to success. That opportunity, when interpreted, means that when the chief available supply of food fails, or lessens, or becomes unpalatable or undigestible, that a substitute previously provided should be immediately supplied. Let the substitute be early rye, clover, oats, millet, corn, or other fodder, grown for the purpose, according to the time in the season in which the pressing need comes; and if neither are in available time, then let the substitute take the form of ground grain in larger measures than should be given to every cow in milk, every day, even when feeding on the flushest and choicest of grasses. That is the way the 5,000-pound to the cow dairymen do; and they win in doing it. But the blighted class seem to look upon it as they would on an accidental fire, an untimely death, an early frost, an unavertable calamity; a kind of Providential dispensation, the superstitious regard it. The latter class betake themselves to prayer for rain, instead of taking the scoop-shovel to the provender, and distributing it to their famishing herds. Troops of them don’t know that they are suffering any but present loss in weight, and delude themselves into thinking a blessed rain will restore their cows to the position they fell from. They don’t seem to comprehend that they thus lose their grip on the $50 and $60 per annum prize, and their uncertainty of getting it. The result is, they have their big flow of milk at the season of the year in which dairy products are ever the cheapest; and their cows are crippled for good performance at the pail, when ever-returning good prices in the fall and early winter show them what golden opportunities they have lost.

Now I can look over my list of patrons and see in my mind’s eye the men who practice both the systems I allude to. One is the discomforted, doubting dairyman with but too little to show for his hard work; and the other has a good bank account, or a plethoric purse, and his sharpest look is given in search of more good cows, whose owners don’t know any more than to sell them. There is not a whine about them, nor do they go into a decline because another half-cent could not be squeezed out of the cheese market. Their talk is, content with “well done,” and their cure for hard times is, “more milk.”

The most manifest loss, as it appears to one taking note of merely dollars and cents, in the prosecution of any special pursuit comes to light in the dairy business, from this the chief neglected opportunity of the dairymen to gain more wealth.

There are other neglected opportunities,—minor matters in themselves—that if improved would make the goal of the enterprising dairymen easier of attainment, and are, therefore, desirable adjuncts in accomplishing his purposes, and they seem to be concomitants of measurably high success. One is in not properly testing the real profit-earning capacity of each cow, and weeding out those that are not only not profitable but are actually, year after year, eating into the profits derived from other, and it may be not so good appearing cows. Profitable performance not only at the pail, but at the churn and the cheese-vat, should alone give a cow respite from coming, in her youth, to the butcher’s block.