140 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



In addition to the use of the Babcock test and scales there 

 are many points to be considered in selecting and judging dairy 

 cattle and, using this cow as an illustration, I will try and make 

 plain the essential points to be observed in selecting dairy cows. 

 If during my talk there are any questions you would wash to 

 ask, I will be glad to answer them for you. 



There are five essential points that must be present in the 

 makeup of any cow if she be highly productive, and the absence 

 of any one of these points is proof that the cow is either not 

 productive or that she will not remain productive over a long 

 period of time. These points may be enumerated as constitu- 

 tion, capacity, nervous temperament or disposition to work, 

 blood circulation and the ability to convert feed nutrients into 

 milk and butterfat. Considering these, one at a time, it is al- 

 ways well to begin at the head. . 



Constitution is indicated first by large nostrils. Nothing 

 purifies the blood except oxygen, and no oxygen ever reaches 

 the lungs and comes in contact with the blood except through 

 the air which the animal breathes. If the nostrils are small the 

 amount of air is limited, or the cow must breathe twice as rap- 

 idly as if her nostrils were larger. The respiration of cows is 

 practically the same. Therefore, cows with small nostrils do 

 not take into their lungs the same great amount of fresh air 

 and oxygen that cows w^ith larger nostrils do. Passing back it 

 is desirable that the cow be deep from the top of the shoulder 

 to the floor of the chest, well sprung in the front ribs and deep 

 in the heart girth. A cow that is shallow in the chest and heart 

 girth and slab sided in the front ribs is considered lacking in 

 constitution. It should be remembered that the dairy cow is an 

 extremely hard worked animal. A cow that will produce in one 

 year 18,000 pounds, or even 10,000 pounds of milk, has accom- 

 plished more in providing food for mankind than three or four 

 steers working the same length of time would have done. Be- 

 cause of the fact that she works as persistently as she does, and 

 that she is stabled six or eight months out of each year in a barn 

 which is too often cold, dark, damp and poorly ventilated, where 

 she is subjected to disease germs of tuberculosis, cow pneu- 



