HINTS ON SELECTING A DAIRY COW

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 138, 3 August 1911, Page 8

HINTS ON SELECTING A DAIRY COW

Some useful hints on tho selecting of a dairy cow were recently given before tiio British Agricultural Students’ Union by Professor Cluno, who urged that every farmer should obtain, from practical observation, an idea of wiiat constitutes a really good milker. It is impossible’to form reliable conceptions in this matter from the orthodox descriptions published in text-books. The only way is by constant, critical, and intelligent survey of living animals of good individual type and conformation. Being a machine, tho dairy cow has to bo fed with the wherewithal from which the milk is produced—-namely, food—and it stands to reason the more she can eat and digest the 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 tho quantity of food which she assimilates. Tho word “rich” is often used in connection with milk, hut this ability to produce milk with a high proportion of butter-fat is chiefly an inherited trait, and is not capable of improvement beyond tho cow’s natural level. But tho quantity can lie increased, and though many old folic call a certain piece of land “a good butter field,” because tho cows, when grazing on it, give a bigger yield of butter, yet tho actual increase comes in, not in the percentage of butter-fat, but in the larger quantity of milk available for churning purposes, due, to the better herbage on tho field. Tho professor asserted that no man can really know a cow until ho In--milked her, and ho counselled every young farmer to learn to milk. it was not an irksome task, and it provided a store of useful knowledge that could never bo acquired from a hook. In selecting a dairy cow, the prospective buyers should always milk her, if at all possible. When rubbed across, tho udder should lie soft and yielding under the hand, feeling something like a silk purse. Some cows, after being milked, appear to have large udders that can look well in photographs, but the practical man can form a very good impression of the cow’s capacity if, when she is milked, she looks as if she had been. If tho strand of milk is thin the animal will not bo a good pail-ffllsr, but if it is thick she may be expected to do well. The good milker has a thick teat, blunt at the point. In handling the Boling should be such as if there uero a soft, springy pad undernca.h. In the good milker the backbone and tiie two big hips will bo found hard to cover, but generally to the tom I. she will be found so soft in flesh Unit it would almost seem as if the finger and thumb would meet through it. Avoid tho cow with the hard, thick skin. The udder is the 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 tire colour, a good milker may be of any colour.