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

Cows of this class give, according to size, from three or four to ten quarts of milk. They very rarely give, even in the most favorable circumstances, half a pint for every ten ounces of hay which they consume.

The milk diminishes rapidly, and dries up wholly the fourth or fifth month in calf.

The fourth class is composed of bad cows. As they are ordinarily in good condition, these cows are often the most beautiful of the herd and in the markets. They have fleshy thighs, thick and hard skin, a large and coarse neck and head, and horns large at the base.

The udder is hard, small, and fleshy, with a skin covered with long, rough hair. No veins are to be seen either on the perineum or the udder, while those of the belly are very slightly developed, and the mirrors are ordinarily small, as in [Figs. 48], [49], and [50].

With these characteristics, cows give only a few quarts of milk a day, and dry up a short time after calving. Some such can scarcely nourish their calves, even when they are well cared for and well fed.

Sickly habits, chronic affections of the digestive organs, the chest, the womb, and the lacteal system, sometimes greatly affect the milk secretions, and cause cows troubled with them to fall from the first or second to the third, and sometimes to the fourth class.

The above classification is very similar to that of Pabst, a German farmer of large experience and observation of stock, who, with a view to simplify the method of Guénon, and render it of greater practical value to the farmer, made five divisions or classes, consisting of, 1st, Very good or extraordinary; 2d, Good or good middling; 3d, Middling and little below middling; 4th, Small; and, 5th, Very bad milkers.

These classifications, adopted by Magne, Pabst, and other good breeders and judges of cows, appear to me to be far more simple and satisfactory than the more extended and complicated classification of Guénon himself. Without pretending to be able to judge with any accuracy of the quantity, the quality, or the duration, which any particular size or form of the mirror will indicate, they give to Guénon the full credit of his important discovery of the escutcheon, or milk-mirror, as a new and very valuable element in forming our judgment of the milking qualities of a cow; and simply assert, with respect to the duration or continuance of the flow of milk, that the mirror that indicates the greatest quantity will also indicate the longest duration. The mirror forms, in other words, an important additional mark or point for distinguishing good milkers; and it is safe to lay it down as a rule that, in the selection of milch cows, as well as in the choice of young animals as breeders, we should, by all means, examine and consider the milk-mirror, but not limit or confine ourselves exclusively to it, and that other and long-known marks should be equally regarded.

But there are cases where a knowledge and careful examination of the form and size of the mirror becomes of the greatest importance. It is well known that certain signs or marks of great milkers are developed only as the capacities of the animal herself are fully and completely developed by age. The milk-veins, for instance, are never so large and prominent in heifers and young cows as in old ones, and the same may be said of the udder, and the veins of the udder and perineum; all of which it is of great importance to observe in the selection of milch cows. Those signs, then, which in cows arrived at maturity are almost sufficient in themselves to warrant a conclusion as to their merits as milkers, are, to a great extent, wanting in younger animals, and altogether in calves, of which there is often doubt whether they shall be raised; and here a knowledge of the form of the mirror is of immense advantage, since it gives, at the outset, and before any expense is incurred, a somewhat reliable means of judging of the future milking capacities of the animal or, if a male, of the probability of his transmitting milking qualities to his offspring.

It will be seen, from an examination of the points of a good milch cow, that, though the same marks which indicate the greatest milking qualities may not indicate any great aptitude to fatten, yet that the signs which indicate good fattening qualities are included among the signs favorable to the production of milk, such as soundness of constitution, indicated by good organs of digestion and respiration, fineness and mellowness of the skin and hair, quietness of disposition, which inclines the animal to rest and lie down in chewing the cud, and other marks which are relied on by graziers in selecting animals to fatten.