120 THE COW 



level ; yet it must be admitted that this particular 

 fault seems to be very common in cows of marked 

 excellence. There may be a special reason for this 

 because a great abdomen and a heavy udder, both 

 so necessary for a good cow, tend to put a down- 

 ward curve in the spine, especially with advancing 

 years. In this case the popular "good top line" 

 and real dairy performance may be to some ex- 

 tent antagonistic. 



The ribs should be well sprung, giving a barrel- 

 shaped chest and enormous abdomen, because if a 

 cow is really to be a high producer she must first 

 of all have a great stomach that can hold and digest 

 large amounts of bulky food. This reminds one 

 of Napoleon's famous dictum regarding the com- 

 mon soldier, "Away with brains. Give me guts." 



The withers should be rather thin and sharp, the 

 very opposite of the beef type. Heavy withers are 

 usually correlated with a thick hard hide, a heavy 

 tail and a generally beefy conformation. The 

 vertebrae should be large and prominent to the 

 touch, showing mainly that they are not padded 

 and covered with fatty tissue. Stripped of their 

 flesh, the skeletons of the milch cow and the typical 

 beef cow can hardly be distinguished by the best 

 trained anatomist, but the dairy cow is more in- 

 clined to be "raw-boned" because she puts her fat 

 in the pail instead of using it to upholster her 

 framework. 



We must shun the hard, thick, inelastic hide, for 



