UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE BENJ> |DE Wheeler , pres.dent 
 
 BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA Thomas Forsyth Hunt, Dean and Director 
 
 CIRCULAR No. 97 
 
 INCREASING DAIRY PROFITS. 
 
 By H. E. Van Norman. 
 
 Profit is the difference between cost of production and the selling 
 price. To insure the largest profit in milk production, the cow owner 
 must know that each cow in the herd is producing enough milk to 
 pay for feed, labor, interest, taxes and depreciation, and then leave 
 some for profit. In one herd, eleven cows produced $200 worth of 
 butterfat above feed cost, while four others ate $20 worth of feed more 
 than the returns for their butterfat paid for. So that the whole fif- 
 teen only averaged $15 each above cost of feed. While, if the man 
 had had only the best eleven, he would have had $20 more money, 
 saved the feed and the labor of handling. The only certain way in 
 which these "robber" cows can be located is by yearly records of 
 milk production. No man has yet been found who can guess accu- 
 rately on every cow in a herd. Records may be made by the owner, 
 or by several joining together in a cow test association, and employing 
 a man to do the work. 
 
 Having located the unprofitable cows, and eliminated them, their 
 places can be filled in a few cases by purchase. The prices are getting 
 high. The best way is through the purchase of a pure-bred sire from 
 a profitable cow, and the saving of his daughters out of the best cows 
 in the herd. Each community should adopt one breed and all buy 
 sires of the same breed. In a short time the grade surplus stock will 
 command from $10 to $50 a piece above the common scrub stock, be- 
 cause of the large amount of it to be found in one community and the 
 reputation they will acquire for breeding that one class of stock. 
 
 Profits can usually be increased by better feeding. Each cow must 
 have enough food— first, to maintain herself; second, with w T hich to 
 make the milk she yields, and any surplus above this is stored up in 
 the form of fat to be used later when she don't get enough food. The 
 cow that has the ability to produce forty pounds of milk a day, and is 
 only fed enough to make twenty-five or thirty pounds a day, does not 
 make milk as cheap as she would when fed to her capacity. In the 
 judgment of the writer, the dairy cow that has the ability to make 
 thirty pounds of milk a day, or better, cannot eat enough alfalfa hay 
 to enable her to do her best work, and she should be fed some form of 
 grain or by-product concentrate low in protein to supplement the 
 alfalfa hay eaten. Every cow must have enough feed. The feed she 
 does eat must contain the minimum amount of protein required for 
 her maintenance and for production of milk. An insufficient amount 
 of feed limits production, an insufficient amount of protein limits pro- 
 duction.