Diary Herd Improvement Associations, commonly called DHIAs, were first formed in the state of Washington in 1916, facilitated by the agricultural extension service.
The idea of a DHIA is keeping records of concerning milk production of dairy cows, tracking individual animals. A group of dairy farmers form an organization, subscribe to the service, employ a party called a tester, and support a small laboratory. Once or twice a month, the farmers weigh the milk produced by individual animals and collect small samples.. The tester conducts lab operations to determine the content of milk fat and other solids, and also assembles the numeric information and provides periodic reports. These "herd book" reports can be ordered so as to list the production of each animal, ranked from highest to lowest. This information guides the farm operator in the selection of which animals to cull and which to use as the parent stock. The process tends to select a high-producing strain. Over time the overall average production level should rise. Since 1916, production per cow has risen dramatically, five- or six-fold.
Reports from this collection include data summaries, and reports. Collection also includes margins and price reports from 1960-1985. These are almost all economics and marketing matters.
This is an unprocessed collection. Any arrangement reflects either a pre-existing order from the records' creators or previous custodians, or preliminary sorting performed by staff.
Most boxes are filed by subject matter but some contain loose files and bound collections. Material in all boxes primarily contains marketing and budget reports, press releases, publications, and charts related to the pricing and selling of dairy products. Boxes 4 and 5 contain bound collections related to the pricing and availability of dairy products.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item description]
Preliminary Guide to the Washington State University Dairy Economics Specialist, WWREC Records, 1960-1985 (UA1994-19)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
This material was transferred to WSU Libraries' MASC by Joe Hillers on August 29, 1994 and retained as UA1994-19.
Government documents were separated out to the science library for review.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.