Milch Cows and Dairy Farming / Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

by Charles Louis Flint

Determination of the Milking Qualities of the Cows.

—The Dutch cattle are, in general, renowned for their dairy qualities; but especially so are the cows of North Holland, which not only give a large quantity, but also a very good quality, so that a yield of sixteen to twenty-five cans[2] at every milking is not rare. Next to these come the West Friesland and South Dutch cows, from which from twenty to twenty-four cans of milk may be calculated on. Though one could not take a certain number and calculate surely what the yield of each cow would be, yet he could come very near the truth if he reckoned that a cow, in three hundred days, or as long as she is milked, gives, on an average, daily, from six to eight cans of milk, from which the whole annual yield would be from one thousand eight hundred to two thousand four hundred cans. Of this the cow gives one half in the first four months, one third in the next three, and in the remainder one sixth. These superficial results cannot be taken, however, as the fixed rule.

[2] A Dutch can is a little less than our wine quart

Professor Wilkins, in his Handbook of Agriculture, gives the following estimates of the yield of milk: A good West Friesland or Gröningen cow will, after calving, give daily fourteen quarts of milk. This will, after a while, be reduced to eight quarts. She may be milked three hundred and twenty-three days in the year, and her product in butter and cheese will amount to one hundred güldens.

In Prof. Kop’s Magazine it is stated that a medium-sized Friesland cow, which had had several calves, was giving daily, on good feed, five and a half to six buckets, or from twenty to twenty-two cans, and over. In South Holland, also, this quantity is considered a good yield of a cow. Of the cows of Gelderland, Overyssel, and Utrecht, the yield cannot be reckoned higher than sixteen cans daily, and that only during the first half of their milking season.