82 JUDGING CATTLE 



animal of nervous temperament is one that is sensitive and 

 active, giving all regions the greatest vitality and all the 

 organs the greatest productive powers. 



To sum up, if we consider a cow simply as a machine for 

 making milk, we find that the food is manufactured into 

 blood by the stomach and its accessories and the blood in a 

 general sense is made into milk by the udder so that the 

 two main manufacturing centers of the dairy cow are the 

 stomach and the udder, and it is around these that what 

 is known as the dairy type has evolved its peculiarities. 

 But as the dairy cow is more than a machine, as she has 

 vitality and recuperative power, we find that the nervous 

 system as expressed in the nervous temperament is what 

 enables her to maintain her enormous productive powers 

 in these centers. 



133. The Dairy Form. It will be understood from th^ 

 previous discussion of the function of the dairy cow that 

 there are four main centers of activity when she is per- 

 forming her function; the digestive system, the milk se- 

 creting system, the circulatory system and the nervous 

 system. And it is because of extreme activity in these 

 centers that the dairy cow inclines towards a given type. 

 She tends to become wedge shaped and lean because of the 

 unusual activity in the regions mentioned. Certain por- 

 tions of her organization have an undue amount of work 

 which tends to their development in an extreme degree, 

 while the other portions because of their activity and lack 

 of nourishment do not develop to the fullest degree ; this 

 results in the instance of unusual performers in a type 

 that is inclined to be narrow in front and wide and deep 

 behind. While it does not necessarily follow that a cow, 

 to be a good dairy animal, must be of this type yet because 

 of the work she does, most of them tend towards it. The 

 relation of type to performance has been the subject of ex- 

 periments by Professor Haecker, reported in Bulletin 67 

 of the Minnesota Experiment Station. When a cow is 

 milking freely if she possesses good dairy qualities there 

 is likely to be a lean appearance over every region of the 



