During the past ten years an investigation which has been in progress at the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station gives direct support to the belief that a good producing and highly profitable dairy herd may be built up from a foundation of common cows if the proper methods of breeding, feeding, and management obtain. The offspring resulting from mating a good pure bred dairy sire with common cows, if given generous care, will show greater production in both milk and butterfat than will their dams. The results of this investigation, herein presented in only a preliminary way, will be treated more conclusively in a subsequent publication.

Owing to the present increasing demand for dairy products, due to a wider dissemination of knowledge concerning their food value, as well as to the shortage occasioned by the abnormal conditions confronting the dairy industry, investigations of this character, which tend to point out practical means of increasing both the productivity of the common cow and her offspring, are highly important. According to government reports, there are in the United States over 23,000,000 so-called dairy animals, the average production of which is less than half that secured where proper methods of selection, breeding, and feeding are followed. To increase the feeding capacity of our present herds, to stimulate the breeding of better cows, and to further the selection of profitable cows is a goal worthy of the best efforts of the dairy farmer. Any information that will afford guidance to him in the building up of his dairy herd from this foundation of common cows is of immediate value and far reaching importance.