Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1880-12-23
How to Tell . Good Cow.
Philadelphia Record.

4 W f1IerS ylearHeuz1H the lore OF COWS
Ea volunteer to tell every now and then how
good cow may be known. They point
cat the speintsn and eseuteheon, the
nose, tue eyes, the ninzzle, width of the
head, the milk vein, the color of the hair,
shape Of the udder or "bag,' length OF
the teats, and great deal more of what
to the uuinitiated appears like ssstuff. +"
And guess it is stufy, on the whole, as
you can no more depend upon it than you
| can on the chances of the moon to insure
rain. There is about as much real sci
ence in The ''point' business as there is
about physiognony, and good deal less
there than is about phrenelogy- that
is not saying much.
There is way to tell whether COW is
good mixer or not Just as there is
to tell whether horse is fast or not. If
you are interested in the speed of horse
you don't examine his ''points" with any
great particularly teeth, his eyes
the length of his tail, nor what he meas
ures around his body just back of the
shoulders; but YOU take him out to the
course and try him. If he trots mile
in two minutes and the fftieth part of a
second can doubtless sell him to
Bonner by telegraph for thousand dol
lars or more; in fact, he has given some
thirty three times more than that for
horses of sixteen seconds less speed, IF
you wish earnestly to know what a COW
will give during week, a month or a
year, weigh her milk st each milking,
mark it down (the weight on the barn
door or in blank book 1.-THE latter is pre-
ferable), and then you will know exactly.
There is no other sure way that L ever
heard of. A good record is as valuable
Tor cows as for horses. Every COW owner
who can weigh pail of milk and write
down the figures can make enc. 1t is es
pecially valuable in selling good c.ws.
what man of sense cares for the vogue
statement that your COW is perfectly
splendid" as mixer; that once upon
time. soon after calying, and while pas.
tmed IN clover three feet high and broad
IN proportion, she gave ten pounds of
butter week? 1t isn't what he wants to
know. The information he bankers after
IS what will she doin year CT so-not
during particular trial when she was at
her best. or was stuffed for the occasion.
There may be deception about it. Two
churnings for butter trial may be
squeezed into week, though the milk for
those churnlngs might have been ten days
in coming from the cow. No actual lie
might be told, but yet the substance of a
lie is there-you are deceived. Just SO as
a great milk delivery on a certain day.
1t shows capacity, but not average.
When you hire man to work on your
farm, any boast by him as to his strength
in lifting rocks or saw logs on a Ger, ain
occasion is not of half the consequence to
you that it is to know that he is steady,
skilful and faithful. And you can not
Judge accurately of those qualities by his
complexion, the color of his hair, the lus-
tie of his eyes the size Of his feet, sthe
shape of his teeth or the length of his ears.
Your neighbor for whom he formerly
worked a season or a month can tell you
more about him III one minute than
days investigation of his physical
points" That neighbOr has his record
or something like it. And it is record
which the buyer of COW wants. When
man offers COW for sale, and comes
Dragging about her merits, he can gener
ally be silenced by asking him how much
milk she grye during the last year, or her
yield of butter, Ii he don't know, and
Can give no figures tall that throw light
on her qualities. you can safely draw one
of two conclusions, viz, that she isn't the
cow for your money, or that he is some,
what shiftless sort of a man. If a cow is
really first class, giving say four thousand
quarts year, or pound of butter day
the owner ought to know it. Details 60
! great way generally when We wish to
establish facts OF make Impressions True
u man may lie in detail as well as in
| wholesale, but it is not SO c mmon it in
wolves too much work and Increases the
liability of detection. 4
A careful record has many values. The
herd owner by it can weed out his poor
| COWS, and may sell them to people who
never think of keeping a record. 1t
shows also the effect Of particular kinds
of food on milk propuction. 1t is a sort
of barometer for testing values. A change
from nice, early-cut hay to that which is
| old, dry, harsh and brittle will be recorded
with telling force. A change from green
rye in the early spring to that which is
headed out and tough will get the same
verdict. So also change from first class
clover to green or dry fodder corn. The
effect will not be the same in every COW,
| but that makes it all the more interesting.
| Milkmen and formers theoriZe about the
Comparative worth of turnips, mangolds,
carrots, oil meal, corn me4l, bran, shorts,
Sue alneo 1oou, etc, ETC., put careful re
cord tells much more than they can.
"But it makes too much trouble" say
many farmers. Well, this is world Of
trouble. 1t is trouble to keep cows at all.
1t is a trouble to milk them and to feed
them; trouble to drive them to pasture,
and to bring them back. Pretty much all
we do in this world is troublesome. But it
is q trouble that will pay about as well as
any care we give our cows. Their value
as roilkers or butter makers is unknown to
US without il, and that knowledge is often
worth great deal of money. Good cows
are not so rare as might be at first sup
posed. A record alone will not make
them good, but careful record in con-
nection with full and regular feeding will,
| in thousands of instances, prove the exis-
tence of dairy qualities hardly suspected
before.
PHILIP SNYDER.
/ Vineland, December, 1880.