Wisconsin's dairy industry grew through a remarkable transfer of scientific knowledge to practical use, transforming the state's agriculture in less than 50 years. Proposed as an alternative to wheat farming as early as the 1850s, dairying was common in southeastern and south central Wisconsin by the early 1860s, and farmers in other regions soon adopted diversified dairy farming suited to the state's geography. At first the general purpose cow provided milk, meat, and motive power, but milk production increased dramatically when farmers embraced the single purpose dairy cow and applied scientific methods to feeding, management, and selective breeding. Most milk was made into cheese and butter, first on the farm, but factories began dominating the cheese industry in the 1870s and the butter industry in the 1890s. Wisconsin had 245,000 dairy cows by 1867 and more than 2,000,000 by 1925, and by 1907 the nation's 13th largest state produced nearly half its cheese and a tenth of its butter.