In my judgment the difference came about in the general rise in price of labor, grain, and alfalfa. The milk that we produced was like a garment cut out of new cloth--it all cost real money. The farmer’s milk was largely produced from corn stalks, wheat pasture, stubble fields, and draws pastured--material that must either be turned into milk or wasted. It had scarcely any market value. Our methods and our cattle were superior to his in many ways, but not enough to make up the difference in the cost of feed. The common method on the farm is to pasture corn stalks during the winter. It is a very wasteful method of feeding but it requires no labor. The cows gather the corn that was missed in the field and eat the leaves and husks. Few cows may be kept on a farm where such methods are in use, but figuring the stalk of no value, such methods produce the cheapest butter fat in the world. The farmer had us beat on the cost of production. He did not feed grain and forget to figure its value. He fed the grain that the huskers left in the field. It had no value except as it came to the milk pail. [Illustration: When the Dairy Cow Needs a Friend] At one time I worked on a ranch in western Colorado where a large number of range cattle were wintered. Alfalfa in that community was selling for three dollars a ton, but we fed it to the weaker cattle only. The strong ones could live on sage brush which cost nothing. Sage brush was not a better feed. It was not nearly so good, but the advantages offset the disadvantages. So it was with us. The advantages of the two systems were weighed and ours found wanting. The average farmer’s cow is a “scrub.” She usually goes dry for three or four months of the year and, even when fresh, gives about half what a developed dairy animal should give. Why do farmers persist in milking “scrubs,” then? Have we not all told them better? I’ll say so! Holsteins and Jerseys are not so rare that farmers do not know what they are. Most farmers have owned a few but have gone back to the old red stand-by. Why? Are we wrong again? In Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and all over the east the red cow is disappearing. People there do a great deal more of dairying than we do. Who knows the business better, they who do dairying as a business or we who do not? But arguments are of no use when they go against known facts. The color of the cow is the result of a condition. The red cow has been better suited to a farmer’s conditions and requirements. Dairy cattle can not rough it like beef or dual-purpose cattle. Where the custom is to stable feed and give good care to cattle, dairy breeds naturally take the lead. Where the dairy business is a side issue, and besides giving milk a cow is expected to face cold winds and to withstand periods of semi-starvation, the dairy type is not in it. [Illustration: The strong, lean, well-developed dairy cows that have never been weakened by starvation or cold.]