102 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



Thighs. 



The thighs should be light, incurving and free from fleshi- 

 ness, the thighs of a dairy cow is sometimes spoken of as being 

 " cat-hammed." There is no reason why the thighs should be 

 heavy, and the lighter they are the less body tissue there is to 

 be supported. We should never loose sight of the fact that the 

 dairy cow is not made for making beef, but it is her plain duty 

 to make milk. 



Escutcheon. 



It was Guenon who first called attention to the hair, imme- 

 diately above the udder, running in opposite directions from 

 which the hair does on other parts of the body. This is sup- 

 posed to be due to the artery which passes this part to the 

 udder. It is supposed by some that this is the only point by 

 which Guenon judged a dairy cow, but it is only one of the ten. 

 The escutcheon is an index to the amount of blood that is supplied 

 to the udder. Professor Craig in his book on judging dairy 

 cattle states : " In 1878 a commission was appointed by the 

 Governor of Pennsylvania to inquire into the reliability of this 

 point, and they reported in its favor. It is unnecessary to go into 

 details of the various classes of escutcheons, as Guenon enumer- 

 ates eight classes and eight orders, or, in other words, eight 

 different shapes and eight different sizes. He claimed that the 

 shape was indicative of the quantity and the size was an index 

 of duration of the milk flow. The broader it extends over the 

 thigh and the greater the length of it the better the escutcheon 

 is considered to be. Guenon believed that the thigh escutcheon 

 indicated the quantity of milk the cow gave, while the upper 

 portion or verticle escutcheon the length of time she would milk 

 and with these he considered the feel of the skin, the character of 

 the hair, and the color of the skin as indicative of the quality of 

 the milk. With these features he also associated the " thigh 



