88 BETTER DAIRY FARMING 



be no open space in front of the udder, but it should extend forward 

 so that the underline of the cow's body made by the abdomen and 

 udder will be comparatively straight. The muscular development 

 must be such that the udder is well supported and not pendulous. 

 In some of the earlier imported cows the udder was really a bag 

 hanging down between the thighs. This is not the kind of udder 

 now wanted on the ideal cow in any of the dairy breeds. We 

 want the udder to start high up behind and fill in all the space 

 between the thighs and extend way forward. The udder must 

 not be cut up between the right and left halves and between the 

 fore and rear quarters. Probably the greatest general defect in 

 the form of the udder in all breeds is the lack of development of the 

 fore quarters. In selecting a bull, his dam, maternal granddam and 

 the dam of his sire should be seen to determine what the chances 

 are for him to transmit the proper form and size of udder. In 

 selecting within our own herds, the inheritance to be expected 

 from the females is known and should be considered in deciding on 

 which heifers to keep for breeders. 



139. Quality of udder tissue. — The quality of the udder is 

 highly important. There are two extremes in udder quality, the 

 meaty udder, and the highly elastic udder. The meaty udder as a 

 rule will not yield much milk, no matter how large it is. The tissue 

 in a meaty udder is not truly secreting tissue. This emphasizes 

 the importance of milking out a cow when buying her in order to 

 thoroughly examine the tissue of the udder. Of course, we have all 

 kinds of variation between the large meaty udder with a small 

 amount of true secreting tissue and the very fine large udder made 

 up of true, elastic, secreting tissue that milks out when the milk is 

 drawn. 



140. The manufacture of the milk. — The udder of a cow 

 does not hold much milk. When we milk out a cow, most of the 

 milk is secreted from the blood during fche process of milking. Of 

 course, there is some space in the udder that fills up with milk 

 between milkings, but most of the space is filled up with secreting 

 cells in which the materials from which milk is made are deposited 

 between milkings and the tissue of the udder made ready for the 



