HINTS ON SELECTING A DAIRY COW.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7867, 1 August 1911, Page 2

HINTS ON SELECTING A DAIRY COW.

Some useful hints on the selecting of a dairy cow were recently given before tho British Agricultural Students' Union by Professor Chine, who urged that every farmer should obtain, from practical observation, an idea of what constitutes a really good milker. It ! is impossible to form reliable conceptions ~iu this matter from the orthodox descriptions published in textbooks. The only way is by a constant, critical, and intelligent survey of living animals of good individual type and conformation. Being a machine, the dairy cow has to be fed with tho wherewithal from which the milk is produced ' —namely, food —and it stands to reason that the more she can eat and digest Dig greater her capacity as a manufacturer is likely to be. By using suitable- food the machinery of the cow will not become clogged, and her yield of milk will depend upon the quantity of food which she assimilates. The word “rich’ 5 is often used in connection with milk, but this ability to produce milk with a high proportion of butter-fat is chiefly an inherited trait, and is not capable of improvement beyond the cow’s natural level. But the quantity can bo increased, and though many old folk call a certain bit of land "a good butter field,” because the cows, when grazing on it, give a bigger yield of butter, yet the actual increase comes in, not in the percentage of but-ter-fat, but in the larger quantity of . milk available for churning purposes, due to the better herbage on the field. The professor asserted that no man can really know a cow until he has milked her, and ho; counselled every young farmer to learn to milk. It was not an irksome task, and it provided a storp of useful knowledge' that could never be acquired from a book. In selecting ■ a dairy cow, the prospective buyers should always milk her, if at all possible. When rubbed across,-’ the udder should bo sof\ and yielding under "the’/hand, feeling something like ,a silk nurse. Some cows, after being milked, appear to have largo udders \ that can look well in photographs, but the practical man can form a very good impression of tho cow's capacity if, when she is milked, she looks as if she had been. If the strand of milk is thin the animal will not bo a good pail-filler, but if it is thick sho may bo expected to do well,' The good milker has a thick teat, blunt at the point. In handling tli£ feeling should be such as if there were a soft, springy pad underneath. In tho good milker the backbone and the two big hips will bo found hard to cover, but generally to the* touch sho will ho found so soft in flesh that it would almost seem as if tho finger and thumb would meet through it. Avoid the cow with tho hard, thick skin. The udder is tho great deciding point,, and I would forgive a cow many things if she had a good milk-bag. Her walk is most important. and she should look intelligent* and bright. -With regard to colour, a good 'milker may bo of any colour.