LONGEVITY OF DAIRY COWS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1770, 7 June 1913, Page 8

LONGEVITY OF DAIRY COWS.

A PROFESSOR'S VIEWS. Professor C. 11. Eckles, of tlie Missouri Experiment Station, sums up tho station's investigations along tho line of the profitable longevity of dairy cows in part as follows:— "Probably tho majority of dairy cattle are rejected from the herd on account of failure to breed, or from wider trouble before tile effect of advancing years can bo observed to any marked event. It is a fact often observed that a « may make her best.rceord when ten or eleven vcars old, although as a rule she ili.es her best rather earlier. It n, dairy cow continues to breed, sho usually shows no marked decline until at least twelve years old. Occasionally a cow continues to breed until she is 1G or 18 years old. "While it is not entirely safe to judgo tho future milk production of a cow from her two-year-old record, it is reasonably safo to Judge the richness of her milk. "A 'dairy cow on the average as a two-year-old may be expected to produce about 70 per cent.; as a three-year-old, around SO por cent, j ntid as a four-year-old, about 90 per cent, of the milk and butter-fat sho will produce under tho same treatment when mature. "The richness of tho milk remains practically constant from year to except that after the third milking period there is a slow gradual decline with advancing years."