200 THE MANAGEMENT AND FEEDING OF CATTLE 



with sufficient frequency to make it desirable to avoid 

 such changes as far as it may be possible to do so. Such 

 partial withholding of milk is one of the ways in which 

 the inherent powers of cows to do thus is manifested. 

 Milk-giving by the cows is most satisfactory when the 

 relations between the milkers and the cows are, so to 

 speak, friendly in character. 



It is greatly important that the milking shall be 

 done with unvarying regularity. It has been noticed 

 that when, on the Sabbath, milking was deferred for a 

 time in the morning, the whole amount given for 

 the day was less than on other days, and there was 

 some lowering of the yield the day following. The influ- 

 ence of the milk-giving habit is of considerable potency, 

 and, as has been shown, such habit may be affected by 

 various causes. Highest attainment in milk production 

 cannot be reached with cows which are not milked at the 

 same hour from day to day. 



Whether milking machines will become so per- 

 fected that they will supersede hand-milking in large 

 herds cannot be stated with the positiveness of assur- 

 ance at this time. If such machines could be so per- 

 fected that they would do the work as well as it can be 

 done by hand and more quickly and cheaply, it would 

 work a revolution in dairying. There are grounds, how- 

 ever, for the apprehension that such machines will not 

 entirely dispense with hand labor in milking, as the 

 relation is as close between the manipulating of the udder 

 by hand-pressure and milk-giving as it is between the 

 " bunting " of the calf and milk-giving in the cow that 

 feeds her calf thus. 



Keeping milk records. — The great practical value 

 of milk records cannot easily be over-estimated When 

 properly kept, they make it possible to draw an approx- 

 imate comparison between the producing power of the 

 different cows in the herd. This comparison will be 

 exact if all the food fed to the respective cows and all 



