THE MILK MIRROR. 



Every good judge of a milk cow, for instance, wants to see in her 

 a small, fine head, with short and yellowish horns ; a soft, delicate, 

 and close coat of hair ; a skin soft and flexible over the rump ; broad, 

 well-spread ribs, covered with a loose skin of medium thickness ; a 

 broad chest ; a long, slender tail ; straight hind legs ; a large regu- 

 larly-formed udder, covered with short, close silky hair ; four teats of 

 equal size and length, set wide apart ; large, projecting lacteal veins, 

 which run along the belly from the udder towards the iorelegs, form- 

 ing a fork at the end, and finally losing themselves in a round cavity; 

 and when these points, or any considerable number of them, are. found 

 united in a cow she should be pronounced a good milker. An animal 

 in which these signs are found would rarely fail of having a good 



milk mirror" or escutcheon, on which Guenon, after many years oi 

 careful observation and experiment came to lay particular stress ; and 

 on the basis of which he built up a system or theory so complicated 

 as to be of little practical value compared with what it might haye 

 been had he seen fit to simplify it so as to bring it within the easy 

 comprehension of the farmer. As one means of forming a judgment 

 of milking qualities, however, it must be regarded as very important, 

 since it is unquestionably sustained by facts in a very large majority 

 of cases which have come under the writer's observation. 



The milk mirror or es< i-tcheon is formed by the hair above the udder, 

 extending upwards between the thighs, growing in opposite direction 

 from that o-f other parts of the body. In well-formed mirrors, found 

 only in cows that have arteries which supply the milky glands large 

 and fully developed, it ordinarily begins between the four teats in 

 the middle, and ascends to the vulva, and sometimes even higher, the 

 hair growing upwards. The direction of the hair is subordinate to 

 that of Jthe arteries, for the relation existing between the direction of 

 the hair above the udder and the activity of the milkv glands is ap- 

 parent on a care-ful examination of all the cases. When the lower 

 part of the mirror is long and broad, with th? hair growing from 

 below upwards, and extending well out on the thighs, it indicates that 

 the arteries which supply the milk glands, and which ?>re situated 

 just behind it, are large and capable of conveying much blood, and of 

 great activity to the functions of secretion. 



Now, in the bull, the arteries which correspond to the mammary 

 or lacteal arteries of the cow are not so fully developed, and the es- 

 cutcheons are smaller, shorter, and narrower. Guenon applied the 

 same name, " milk mirror," to these marks in the bull ; and the natural 

 inference was that there should exist a correspondence or similarity 

 in the mirror of the bull and the cow which are coupled for the pur- 

 pose of producing an offspring fit for the dairy that the mirror in 

 the bull should be of the same class or a better class than that oi 

 the cow. However, the word milk mirror, when used in connection 

 with a bull, seems paradoxical. 



It is confident!-" asserted by the advocates of Guenon's method 

 and with much show of reason that the very large proportion or 

 cows of bad or indifferent milking qualities, compared with the good, 

 is owing to the mistakes in selecting bulls without the proper marks 

 or points. As to the transmission of the milk mirro'r, it has-been 

 found in many cases that bulls sprung from cows with good mirrors 

 had smaller and more heart-shaped mirrors, spreading out pretty 

 broad upon the thighs. 



Pabst, a successful German breeder, says that he used such bulls 

 for several years, and that the milk mirrors were transmitted in the 

 majority of cases in the male progeny, and in nearly every case very 

 large and beautiful mirrors were given to the heifer calves. His in- 

 ference is that in breeding from cows noted as milkers regard should 

 be had to the form of the mirror oi the bull, and the chance of his 

 transmitting it. 



If any credit is due to this ingenious method, it may be laid down 

 as a principle in the selection of a bull to get dairy stock that the 



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