January, 1912 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 29 
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Many consider the Jersey breed produces the ideal family cow, as well as being one of the most beautiful and the best all-round dairy animal 
The Family Cow 
By R. M. Gow 
=sq)| HE cow has been so long and intimately 
‘d\| identified with the domestic life of mankind 
that it has been said that wherever there is 
a cow there is a home. Home is not home 
without a mother, and without a cow it is 
not so much of a home as it is possible for 
the very climax of the domestic calamities 
x to’ be.- As 
enumerated in the old Scotch song, “Auld Robin Gray,” the 
le bye) 
“coo was stolen awa’.’”’ The home may be a peasant’s turf 
hut in Scotland, a log cabin in the wilds, a board shanty, a 
modern suburban home or a multi-millionaire’s palace, yet 
the meek and patient cow is ever an important and valuable 
adjunct. She accompanied our American pioneers as they 
journeyed ever westward to people the wilderness and 
found homes, helping to haul the family wagon as well as 
to sustain its members, as they carried with them— 
“A book and piow and pen, 
A cow and sickle and seeds; 
Yea, all God needs 
For the making of men.”’ 
For many of us the family cow occupies a prominent place 
in those pictures which memory draws of “‘our life’s morn- 
ing march, when our bosoms were young”’; and although we 
may have attained to circumstances of affluence and even 
luxury, we sometimes sigh: 
“‘O, for festal dainties spread 
Like my bowl of milk and bread, 
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood 
On the doorstep gray and rude!”’ 
What then more natural than that, in these days when so 
many are returning to the land, we should consider the cow 
as almost a necessity to the completeness of our country or 
suburban home? Waiving all sentiment, there is no better 
aid to pleasant and economic housekeeping than that derived 
from the dairy product of the cow, the source of some of 
the best and most wholesome of foods, and of the most 
necessary and universal delicacies of the table, either alone 
or as culinary necessities. 
The family cow should be a producer—that is to say, her 
yield of milk should be generous in quantity, rich in quality 
or percentage of butter-fat and casein, and persistent the 
year around. In her selection, therefore, knowledge of 
dairy type and conformation is necessary, for dairy quality 
and perfection of dairy type are very apt to be found in 
combination in the same animal, although there are excep- 
tions to the rule, and the ultimate criterion is the milkpail 
and the butter-fat test. The conformation of the good 
dairy cow should be somewhat like a wedge, thin in the front 
quarters and wide in the hinder, looking from the head. 
The side view of the body should present much greater 
depth at the flanks than the front, with the ribs well rounded 
out and a capacious paunch. This latter shows capacity for 
food, the raw material for the animal to turn into milk. The 
line of the back should be reasonably straight, but the older 
animals will drop some at the loins under the continued 
weight of the digestive organs and calf-bearing. The rump 
should be straight and broadly arched. The head should 
be clean cut, with bright and prominent eyes and a broad 
muzzle, the sign of a good feeder, and large distended 
nostrils show constitution. ‘The neck should be thin. The 
most important feature to study is the udder. It should 
be capacious, flexible to feeling with the hand, with teats 
evenly placed and of such size as to be easily handled. The 
udder should extend well posteriorly, attached high up be- 
hind and run well forward. Large milk-veins should charac- 
terize the mature animal, indicating a good supply of blood 
to the udder, needful for the production of a large yield of 
