Charlotte messenger. [volume] (Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., N.C.) 1882-18??, 1882-08-26
Promoting MILK.

The following from the London Live
Stock Journal is good statement of
some practical points suggesting the
extent to which milking qualities are
dependent on treatment and training:
ga copious flow of milk, sustained
through many months, is quality
which has been produced by art in
domestication, Wild cattle rarely pro-
vide more than enough milk to rear
their own offspring, and the flow of it is
of comparatively short duration. Small
in volume, the milk is rich in quality,
but the Tactical organs soon dry off again.
This, of course, is in harmony with the
requirements of the young animals in a
wild state, and is correlation of the
rowing life and the haphazard feeding
of the dams. More milk than the calf
requires under such conditions would
be waste of material energy which
nature does not encourage. 1t would,
moreover, be an encumbrance to the
mother. Wild cattle are neither good
mixers nor good fatteners, and in parts
of England where calves are allowed to
run with their domesticated dams gen
Grafton after generation, the breed of
such animals is not famous for milk
giving. Like that of the mare and eve,
the milk is smaller in quantity, rich in
quality and of short duration. The de-
sultory and irregular sucking of calf
or foal or lamb is not conducive to the
development of large flow of milk,
aud it distinctly tends to shorten the
flow. Hand. milking of similar char
acter has the same effect. Young people
are allowed to learn how to milk on
cows who are going dry for calving,
not on those who are still in full flow.
New beginners soon dry up cows
milk, and bad mixers do the same.
'Heavy milking properties, then, are
artificial, in the sense that they have
been developed under domestication,
and by careful breeding, for given end;
yet, like many other qualities, which
are little more than mere germs in
nature, they become hereditary by long
usage. Few sorts OF animals, if any,
are more susceptible than cattle of being
moulded into what we want no physi-
cal quality is SO easily trained and devel-
oped as that of giving milk. 1t is a
function which, constantly varying of
itself, can be dgarfed or extended at
will. By means of careful training,
kind treatment, and intelligent breeding
it can be developed and male heredi,
tary an opposite system keeps it in a
state of nature. The habits of COW,
and the food she receives, have great
deal to do with her milking powers !;
quick and silent hand-milking does the
rest. The practice of hand-milking
COWS has all along tended greatly 10
the development of the tactical glands.
and this development has become here
diiary in our best milking breeds. The
ewes of the Larzac breed of sheep, from
whose milk the famous Roquefort
cheese is made in France, have
been hand-milked for generations,
so that their milking properties are now
considerable and inherited. By repeat
eddy exciting the teats it is even posi-
BILE to cause an animal that has never
borne offspring to yield small quantity
of milk, and COW sometimes remains
barren several years after having had a
calf, giving a profitable quantity of
milk all the while"