44 



DAIRYING 



report little or no financial benefit from warming the water for 

 milch cows, but it is certainly true that a sensitive cow especially 

 when fresh in milk may be injured by drinking cold water, while 

 other cows not accustomed to a comfortable stable and producing 

 little milk may not be disturbed in any way by drinking cold water. 





PLATE 4 A Well Balanced Udder. 



Y. The Form of the Udder 



203. In judging or in selecting a dairy cow the form or shape 

 of the udder is an important point to be considered. It has al- 

 ready been shown (Par. 184) that the different quarters of a cow/s 

 udder may give milk containing different per cents fat, but this only 

 varies with the order in which the quarters or teats are milked. 



The udder as a whole secretes milk of the same average 

 composition from all quarters. The development of the udder, 

 however, may have considerable influence on the amount of milk 

 produced by each quarter. If the udder is well balanced, ap- 

 proximately the same amount of milk will be produced by the 

 fore as the hind quarters. Hills reports trials with five cows 

 which gave 46 per cent, of their milk from the fore quarters 

 and 54% per cent from the hind quarters. Plumb found that with 

 well balanced udders the difference in yield of milk from the fore 

 and the hind quarters was only about 0.2 pounds per day. 



The shape of the udder is largely an inherited characteristic, 

 and since faulty fore udders are more common than defective hind 



