A GOOD COW.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1181, 19 September 1885, Page 4

A GOOD COW.

When dairymen fully realise the difference between a good cow and a poor cow, they will understand the Becret of success. All the profit is found in the extra quarts. If a cow which gives eight quarts per day for, »»y 300 days, just pays expenses, a cow which gives 10 quarts per day on the same ration, yields a clean profit of 600 quarts per year ; a cow which gives twelve quarts under the same conditions, yields a clean profit of 1200 quarts — that is a twelve-quart cow is only better by one-fifth than a fcenquart cow, under the supposition, but is actually twice as profitable. As to what constitutes a good cow, different countries have different standards. On this point Dr Knapp is reported, in the " Spirit of the Farm," as saying : In North Holland a cow that does not at maturity give 10,000 pounds of milk in a year, on an average of nearly 17 quarts per day for 300 days, is not regarded as worthy of being recorded in the herd book as a thoroughbred. In New York ten quarts per day for 300 days, or 6000 pounds per annum, is regarded as sufficient to indicate a good cow. In the Prairie States of the North-west about the New York standard prevails, though it requires a better cow every year to be classed as good. A grade shorthorn cow, upon the lowa Agricultural College Farm, gave 7245 pounds of milk in seven months; three imported Eriesian heifers, three years old, gave, respectively, in nine months and twenty-one days, 7152, 7546, and 7620 pounds of milk. Last fall a shorthorn heifer of the^Princess family, three years old, gave from October 15 to December 1, just 46 days, 1241 pounds of milk, or an average of 13i quarts per day. I might mentionUwo extra cows of which I had personal knowledge ; the imported Dutch cows Maid of Twist and Mint, each gave in one year 16,000 pounds of milk. If we estimate the lean beef in an average cow at 400 pounds, which is rather high, the cow that gives 16,000 pounds of milk in one year furnishes to man the nutritive equivalent to the carcases of twenty cows. — Exchange.