BUYING ON LOOKS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 104, 19 May 1937, Page 15

BUYING ON LOOKS

How Farmers Gamble Commenting on the value of milk recording, ,the Bucks Milk Eecording Society states that the numbersof faroiers who engago in milk production to make a living and yet who do not keep records is "almost unbelievable, " says an English farmers' journal. As a rulo when a farmer is short of milk and wants a cow he goes to a market, and "looks" are all that guide him. He looks at her horns to ascertain her age, then looks at her top and under line to estimate her constitution (length of life), and finally looks at her udder; and should she have been well stocked for twenty-four hours or more, he invests in this seemingly good cow. Whether this cow will give him 500 or 800 gallons of milk in a lactation is beyond his calculations and farthest from his thoughts, yet the difference in these yields would approach her value. It must be admitted that this is the general rule, and it is evident that the farmer went to buy "Cow" and not milk. ' ' Surely the time will eome when some of these speculators will prefer to buy a cow with a proved yield, even at enhanced values. The gain is not confined to that one anioial, moreover, but passes on permaneptly to the herd.