THE RURAL WORLD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 575, 11 June 1913, Page 7

THE RURAL WORLD.

MILK VEINS. The interior of a cow has often been declared to be a big mystery, and just by wha« process she converts food into a flow of milk we may never know conclusively. This makes it difficult to determine by external indications the producing capacity of a cow, but there are certain indications of outward signs that have a close relation to produetion. All cows With large udders are not necessarily good cows, but a good cow always has these two requisites. In looking over heavy producing cows or their pictures there is, however, one feature that cannot help but be noticed, and that is the prominence of large winding blood veins on the lower part of the abdomen and on the outsides of the udder. Such veins invariably mean that there is something doing in the glands from which they carry the blood, the arteries which carry the blood to the glands being in the interior and not visible. Blood is the medium of action, whether it be in the elabrain of milk or in physical action. Have you ever noticed how the veins stand out on a great racehorse? The same is true of the cow, and when you find prominence of veins you can almost bank on her a heavy producer. We recently had an opportunity to observe this ir the cow that holds the world's milking record, Sadie De Kol Burke, a Californian cow. The vein 3on this cow had to carry blood to produce as high as 1301bs of milk a day. The way they stood out and twisted and turned about was a marvel. There are no infallable signs for telling a good cow, but the prominence of tbe milk veins comeß as near to it as any. You never find prominent milk veins on a scrub cow.—Pacific Review. DAIRY HERD TESTING. The valuable movement of organised dairy herd testing is reported as spreading with great rapidity throughout the United Kingdom. The British Department of Agriculture has issued a recent notice to the following effect: —"It is satisfactory to notice that the practice of keeping milk records is becoming more and more general, and the dairy farmer who can point to a good record of his cow's performance at the pail speedily finds a ready sale for his young stock. Too much care, however, cannot be taken in the actual process of milk weighing, which should not be left to the milkerß. The average cow hand is seldom an expert when arithmetic is concerned, and it is sometimes difficult to decipher his figures, his "threes" and "eights" and "ones" and "sevens" frequently bearing a strong likeness to one another, which is apt to lead to serious miscalculations. As a rule, too, in his anxiety to show good results he is apt to give the cow the benefit of any fraction of a pound indicated by the weighing dial, and quarters do not appear on his record sheet with anything like the frequency of halves, a yield of just over the quarter pound being generally entered as a half The scales in use should frequently be tested for accuracy, and the utmost care taken to use only those buckets which weigh the exact amount allowed for them on the dial." THE DUAL PURPOSE MYTH. It is pitiable to witness the endeavour being still made to produce milking stock from beef cattle. Dairy farmers must realise that Nature has designed two types of cattle. One tends to turn the food into flesh, and in consequence, is termed the beef type; the other converts the food into milk and butterfat, and is, therefore, classed as the dairy animal. The only sure way in determining j the general tendency of a herd of cattle is to test the animals with scales and butterfat tester, and discard those cows as milkers not coming up to a desired standard of efficiency When an aaniaml indicated by testing that she has been intended for beef production rather than for miking pur poses, let the butcher have her It is simply the height of folly for a dairyman to feed a cow for milk when she is all the time indicating that beef making is her bpsiness in life. No man knowing anything of stock breeding would think of building up a beef herd with, say, pure Jersey cattle. • Then why endeavour to make a herd of cattle of a pronounced type yield milk and butter in payable quantities when . Nature has decreed against it.? j