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

Milk-mirrors are sometimes symmetrical, as in [Figs. 29], [30], [34], [35], [37], and [38]; sometimes without symmetry, as in [Figs. 42], [45], and [50]. When there is a great difference in the extent of the two halves, it almost always happens that the teats on the side where the mirror is best developed give, as we shall see, more milk than those of the opposite side. We will remark here that the left half of the mirror is almost always the largest; and so, when the perinean part is folded into a square, it is on this side of the body that it unfolds, as in [Figs. 31], [36], and [42]. Of three thousand cows in Denmark, M. Andersen found only a single one whose escutcheon varied even a little from this rule. We have observed the contrary only in a single case, and that was on a bull. The perinean part of the mirror formed a band of an inch to an inch and a half in breadth, irregular, but situated, in great measure, on the right side of the body. Stretching towards the upper part of the perineum, it formed a kind of square, with a small projecting point on the right, [Fig. 51].

Fig. 33.

Fig. 34.

Fig. 35.

Fig. 36.