Studies in Milk Records: The Influence of Foetal Growth on Yield

Abstract

In a previous paper on the “Interpretation of Milk Records” the following points were dealt with:I. Selection of a figure definitive of a cow's milking capability.II. The influences affecting such a figure.(a) The usual methods of describing a cow by her total yield per calendar year, per lactation, or per average week are inconvenient both for practical breeding on a large scale and for definite enquiry on the inheritance of milk yield or its possible correlation with other characters. The figures are inconvenient because a variety of circumstances which affect them must be stated for every individual case before such figures can be reliable. Chief of these circumstances are age of cow, length of lactation, number of weeks dry before calving, interval between calving and subsequent service, and time of year of calving.