The Oregon daily journal., May 31, 1908, Page 32, Image 32

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II I LE Helmar
Kabild was ap
pointed dairy ex
pert for the Bu
reau of Animal
Industry in , the
vv national Depart
ment of Agricul
ture tn April,
, this is probably
'the first public
announcement of
hi$. appointment
w life rfri announcement, chiefly because :
; all the great editors have been taken up
i with their labors in telling the United States
about the successors of Admiral Evans in
i the command of the great fleet and in de
I ciding who is going to live in the White
' II ouse next winter. ,
They've been too busy to care a soli
dary whoop ; whether; Helmar Rabild has
landed the job of dairy expert or of assist
'ant doorkeeper to the House committee on
supererogatory rules. .
But when the cows come home, some
few years from now, bringing the rich reali
H nation of the hope which led Chief E. Hi
urebstcr, of the Dairy Division; to cam
... stvwn, (
patgn so ardently for Mr. Rabild' s appoint-
1 mftit thn m7 Jiia Jiff st LaL
J ........ m.n, j ItlblOlt WIJ Vj HWK-
ingathim.
, when the cow comes homet all over
the United States, with more than a billion
'dollars to her credit every year, instead of
the modest $62,000,000 she earns for us
now, Mr. Rabild and his labors will loom
just as much larger in the public eye as
sixty-two battleships, of the Dreadnought
type, at $20,000,006 apiece, will loom be.
I side sixty-two of their more modest sisters
jcf the $10,000,000 class, so common now
'adays. "
' : Y That is the simple task Helmar Rabild
slias been hired to Jiandle the raising of the
) dairy products of the United States from
$625,000,000 to $1,2 $0,000,000.
If I had a cow that rve nch milk
' ra dreit her In the finest ilk; .
feed her on th choicest hay. '. .
, And milk het twenty times a day. Old Sons.
f 1 AHE average annual butter yield of j the ;
I .American cow is 150 pounds, with but
, JL ter fat last year bringing' between 28
: - and 29 cents a pound, which was from
'4 .to. 5 cents higher than the prices for 1906. i
Colantha IV, a lady Holstein, owned by J.
rW. Gilette, of Itosendale, Wis, has just finished
her record of a year's homecomings with 998
pounds of butter fat to her credit, while the De
partment : of Agriculture, the general dairy
world, Mr. Qilette and Colantha IV are all grit
ting their teeth because she didn't clear the
1000-pound mark. - .
- But, even at the precise 998-pound accom
fllshment, she did nearly 6 2-3 times as well as
the average old Sis Cow, who trudges barnward
with less than half a pound of butter a dsy to
muw lor.aer ooara ana Keep.
-, -ouDieinavpoor 150-pound "
averager1: exclaims Chief Webster, in -th Tiimr
Division, every time he sets eyes on Mr. Babild.'
It is not an unreasonable aspiration; it is
far from being an unfair expectation, i One can
jrlance over the records of well-kept herds in va-
riotis sections of the country and find hundreds
and hundreds of cows that do as' well, and hun
dred -more, that do' much better.' : ,.:.; V
Within tbe ibrief period of ten years the
methods which Mr. Eabild seeks to inaugurate
hcra hsve doubled the dairy wealth of Denmark.
THE OREGON SUNDAY
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They have spread all over the mote enterprising
and progressive countries of Europe; and, even
in the United States, the last two yean hare
brought about a sentiment auguring that the
- time it rij hewf ?Jfle applieatioiL; of aom
modification .o,tW-jyatemHi. Ae;lmecan cow.
For some years the Dairy Division at Wash
ington has been hard at work to demonstrate' to
the farming population at large a big, main fact
which Europe has learned in all its far-reach-ing,
golden significance. It is this :
The only reason for -the low yield of the
average American cow is that the fanner keeps
no records of individual production. As soon as
he begins to weigh his milk and test it for its
content of butter fat, he can intelligently dis
pose of the poor and unproductive cows, retain
the profitable ones find breed better ones.
, It can be done at, so email an expense that
the wonder is all farmers- do not do it. ; 1
However great . the-wonder, 'the plain fact is,
they don't,. Breeders of select stock, and some :
of the more advanced dairymen, keep very com
plete, records; but the average owner of . a herd,
plete records; but tne average owner of a nerd,
large or small, is still inclined to depend upon
wuat no cocBiuer uia B-uuwieugg vi ma cow
which repeated expenencea prove to be : about
equal to his knowledge of oesophagoscopy.
: REVEALED HIS ERRORS .
Very recently a dairyman of wide reputa
tion, who,, for years, was president of his state
association, decided be was going "to try the
.newfangled scheme of keeping a record of every
blamed cow he owned," not because he needed
.any record, but simpl to see whether the so-
called scientific dairying could beat the bid man,
.who had handled every one of them from the
hour it was born and had milked them all, morn-
Just to prove how little 'there was in it,
he made notes, before he began his records, of
the estimates in which he and his sons held the
best, half dozen cows in the herd. .When the reo-
; ords had -been kept, for a . year, this iswhere
that best half dozen stood:. .
. .First, the fifth; second,' c6w not eligibleto
' the prize half dozen; third, his fourth; fourth,'
' his first; fifth, his sixth; sixth, like the second,
another outsider. . , . '
.His second -and third selections were even
lower in the record list. As for the herd in its
entirety, his records proved that many of the
cows barely paid for themselves, while .one
fourth of the entire herd cost him a net loss. "
" He was a good president, for he made public
. report of how poor a dairyman, he had beerv
lhese individual conversions nave increased
in uuiQDer 01 isie, lor uiey nave receiveu an iin- ;
mense impetus .from the most powerful picture
that was ever drawn. - . ,.;
' If the results .of that single little picture;
could be estimated, there is little doubt that they
would prove to be "greater "than any. that have
attended the most famous paintings the world
has ever known. - '
Fortuny's "Choosing of the Model," : Mun-'
kacay'a appalling evidences of the horror of war,
.11 t i. : : 1 t. i- . "
lovers none has so changed the lives of men as
the ridiculously small cartoon devised by W. 3.
Fraser, professor, of dairying in the University
of Illinois. r '::'r'":: ;.f'Vi'l;'t--'yj -'v;-1'l
- : He put before1 the eye, graphicallyrVforva
single glance, everything the whole power of the "
government has been trying to put into the pop
ular mind for" years. " ; ' ' ' ' 4 .
'Taking, the statistics' Of thirty-six Illinois -dairy
herds, comprising 54 'cows he found that'
the best 139 of them, or 25 per cent;, gave 301
pounds of butter a year ; while-the worst 139 ;
JOURNAL .ftOgJLAffP. SUNDAYyIOaNINa tryf 3f. 1903 '
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gave only 133 pounds apiece." ' ,
Then he drew his picture "of twenty-fiye :
good cows, averaging '301 pounds each, return- '
;.;ing a total profit of $783; and of the 1021 poor
cowa it takes to return precisely the same' total
i prous wiiain ao same lime.
There wasn't a cow in either one of those
two typical herds , as big as one's little finger
nail, and there wasn't a cow that did not loom
larger than life size in the eyes of the least ob
servant of dairymen when the drawing .was.
published by the Illinois Experiment Station.
BETTER . LIVING IN PROSPECT. '
-. . It was copied by farm journals all over the
country, and it is still being copied. It is pre
sented here because there are millions of f arm-
; ers '.-.whodo not see farm journals, and many.
t more millions -of people who 'are baking bread
and pushing pens- and soling shoes and driving
locomotives with never a thought as to the dif-
f erence" that queer, little cartoon is going to
make -with , the help of Herman Babild in the
wages they will earn a few years from now and'
in the money they wilf lay out for the neces-
'' saries of life.', . ' .:....ri.rl:
. Europe was as badly off as the United
States a dozen years ago. . Then.it was, spread
I. 1. '
I?4
ing .to Denmark, Sweden, Holland and England,
that the .wonder-working test associations com
menced to find salvation for the farmers.
Twenty, thirty f armers ; organize and hire a
"tester," agreeing . to contribute a small sum
each per" cow and to feed and lodge the tester
while he is on .their" premises." Their govern
ments give the organizations a subvention to en
courage ?the system and help pay .the tester's
Wage.;iy;;-r;:..-';;.V'Z;.i;:"tM '-J-r 'tX V-1' ',
He jgoes from farm to -farm, and tests two
miJkings, morning and evening, leaving ine rec
miiKings,, morning uiu eveuiug, waving
ord of every cow with the farmer upon his do- ,
parture. . If there be any feature 01 dairy man-,
agement at fault, he -suggests -improvement. -
' ; The system has wrought a revolution in Eu
ropean dairying. ; It Vhas doubled the value of
Denmark's" dairy "output. - It has given rise, to
3000 tpst organizations, and their number is atill
growing.' ' v ' j ,
. Mr.. Rabild came t this country five years,
ago, bringing With him ample knowledge of the
methods already so effective abroad, and over-.,
flowing, -upon his ' arrival, with - astonishment
that this so enterprising America, should bo . ,so .
behindhand iu its dairying. '
" . Having, been an official tester in Denmark, ,
he became an assistant in the Michigan Dairy
Sttlitow'',3totoii
toiatoRc?tvjtoffvic&
tog'?tetossL?i:f
tetortoS?'?lr-yoff'
to?-vtotoW?f?tsy,?Hia?to9-
torlUsWtoSR'fiC
ecw;wd t?U3f?c tvacwto s?fic?fva i'VaciW
and Food Department; but he was' soon ljeard
. .of, and the national government kept" an eager
, eye upon him, while the results of his work and j ,
'of the European examples gained appreciable!
(headway here. i
' No government : subvention can ever be ;
.hoped for jin the United States; but some few f
organizations sprang up from the mere business :
v sagacity of "the population, v In Michigan the ,
f first co-operative test.organization began its ca- j.
, reer two years ago; now there are half a dozen, j
,-with the main difficulty that of securing men to
. take the post of tester. Every farmer contrib-
- utes $rper coW per year and boards the tester. "
Within a year it is expected that there will
he test associations actively -at workin Minne- ,
" sota, as well as in Wisconsin, Illinois, New York
and-Vermont.
. TO SPREAD KNOWLEDGE
- To help them to spread the knowledge of
what such associations can do, and of the ways
of doing it, to foster the entirely new profes
sion of milk tester in the United States in fine,
' to enable the farmers of this country to do for
themselves what has been accomplished for the
farmers of Denmark, is the task that rests upon
the shoulders of Herman Kabila, to whom no-
- , ,i,-
, body, except the Department of Apiculture, is
nnvinr linv Tiarticular attention thus far.
r The government is remembering that the
nation's butter crop is.now worth $263,256,852;
,its cheese crop, $28,060C2; its condensed milk,
" $11,888,792; its plain cream," $4,547,538; its milk,
$217,513,586; its milk fed to calves, $39,000,000;
its by-products, $41,049,226; its calves, $18,000,-
; 000, and its" total dairy crop, $625,000,000.. . ,
rIt has before its eyes that impressive "car -toon
of Professor Fraser's it. is one of the
treasures of the Dairy Division at Washington
and it1 haa before itseyesi also, the vision of
the dy when all the cows Bhall be good cows,'
and the total dairy crop 6hall be worth $1,250,
.000,000 a year. -..'
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