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IMPROVED COW MAKES NEW RECORD IN MILK PRODUCTION FOR WEST CHINA.

One improved cow equals eleven native cows.

Half a century ago the Chinese "Yellow" cow, when not raising her progeny, was used chiefly as a beast of burden, carrying coal or rice, or as a plough animal. It was not until the arrival of Westerners in some of the larger cities of Szechuan, that there was any effort made to use the native cow for milk purposes. Difficulties arose at once, for the average Chinese "Yellow" cow only produced enough milk to raise her offspring. The big majority of these native cows with their hot-water- botfle-like udders only give about 1,200 pounds of milk during a complete lactation period.

Twenty years ago, Dr. Frank Dickinson West China Union University, started an experiment in dairy cattle improvement by breeding an outstanding dairy type bull to native cows. He worked on the theory that, if, a dairy bull from a heavy producing cow backed by a long line of distinguished ancestors, were bred to native stock milk production would increase from four to nine hundr ed per cent.

A definite program was followed in which the attempt was made to use the family characteristics of well known proven foreign dairy breed in order to de- velop the native cow into a dairy conformation animal that would approximate the "ideal"

Just twenty years after beginning this improvement pro- ject, one ot these third generation improved cows de- monstrated in a year of milking, the results of this long- term proposition. A cow, Herd Number 21, soon after calving, was sold to Mr. S. N. Kao of the Standard Dairy, Chengtu, January 1944, Mr. Kao immediately began to treat the cow as a machine for the production of milk. Raw material such as grass, wheat bran, soya-bean and rice congee was fed in liberal quantities. The cow re- sponded splendidly to this High Production Manag- ent, Heavy Feeding and Three Times a Day Milk- ing, and came through, at the end of the year with a record of milk production equal to that of eleven animals of native stock,

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