feminity, udders

[knabe]

been looking over some material i had in boxes and i came up with two concerns.

one, is a "fertile" female versus an "unfertile" female.  the pictures usually used are a fertile female with a somewhat constricted heart girth and bigger hipped proportionately versus the bigger heart girthed, deeper made  model.  seems like a trend to the latter.  any thoughts on this?

second, udders.  been looking at a lot of udders lately.  have notice a couple peculiar things.  some udders seem to have a closer set of teats, all four, versus a square placed set, and also, on the former, some angle forward.  at first, i scoffed at this and i asked my wife about this.  she said the angled teats make it easier for the calf to get the milk as when the bag is engorged and they are trying to get their first drink, it makes it easier if the teat is forward, rather than straight down, as when they try and mouth the straight down teat, it can bend away from their mouth, especially when that bag is all tight.

any thoughts on either of these?

 

[knabe]

nothing huh?

 

[simtal]

I heard this once about goat teats, if they look you in the eye, don't buy.  I would think the same would be true for cattle.  Been my experience that teats that point outward are too long and too big. 

 

[Bawndoh]

Well...I will pipe up.  I dont think people are selecting for udders to have teats that point more forward.  It doesnt make sense to me why one would.  Sure it does perhaps make it easier for the newborn calf to nurse, but what about the other six + months they are usually on the cow.  The calf otta be retarted if it cannot figure out how to nurse once its a week old.  I think that the teats being close together (almost touching) versus square on all four corners, is not such a huge problem either.  I think it is much more desirable than the teats pointing outwards.  In the dairy industry its practically a complement when you have cows whose teats touch at the tips.  This, to me, is more desirable because the suspensory ligament gets weaker over time, therefore most older cows will have little to no prominence in their suspensory ligament.  Which results in teats splayed all over the place, and a weak udder, and poor udder conformation.  If you have cows whose teats point more inwards at a young age, and they keep a moderate milk flow, they will probably last much longer than one whose teats are perfectly square, but milk hard.