We prove that Higman's lemma is strictly stronger for better quasi orders than for well quasi orders, within the framework of reverse mathematics. In fact, we show a stronger result: the infinite Ramsey theorem (for tuples of all lengths) follows from the statement that any array $[\mathbb N]^{n+1}\to\mathbb N^n\times X$ for a well order $X$ and $n\in\mathbb N$ is good, over the base theory $\mathsf{RCA_0}$.