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—is Murne Cowan, the greatest cow the
world has ever known.
In one year's time this remarkable
animal produced 1098.18 pounds of butter
fat and a milk yield of 24,008
pounds. As milk from the dairy herd
of which she is a member fetches ten
cents a quart, if her twelve-month output
had been sold merely as raw milk,
a gross income of three dollars a day,
or over a thousand dollars a year, would
have been secured from this one animal
alone.
Remarkable ? Rather ! Still more rein
a r k able
perhaps, that
d u r i n g her
heifer days,
M u r n e
Cowan was
not regarded
as anything
u n usual. In
fact she was
disposed of
by her unsu
specting
owner for a
song. She
was sold as a
member of a
drove of
nine, the lot
fetching
only eleven
hundred dollars.
O. C.
Barberton, of Barberton, Ohio, was the
fortunate purchaser. At the age of six,
under her new owner, she was developing
an unusual reputation. At this time
her annual yield was 16,729 pounds of
milk and 845.41 pounds of butter fat.
February 19, 1915, she leaped into the
limelight with the astounding record as
first stated.
Murne Cowan is a Guernsey. In making
her record she wrested the championship
title from another of her own
breed. May Rilma.
One Tilly Alcartra, a Holstein cow
and a native of California, made a claim
"SUPERCRITTERS" 763
of contesting, for a little while, Murne's
record. Tilly could show a record of
annual production of 30,452.6 pounds of
milk. Under old time methods of computing
milk values Murne would probably
have had to take second place.
Modern scientific methods, however, are
used in judging records. In spite of her
large yield in pounds Tilly could claim
only 951.3 pounds of this as butter fat.
Then, too, it cost more to feed Tilly,
and the actual profit off Murne was the
greater.
This matter of feeding so as to get
the most out
of an animal
has also of
course been
reduced to a
science.
Again, however,
the pers
o n a 1 equation—not
of
the feeder,
b u t of the
animal—must
be taken into
consideration.
Just as some
humans are
thin, starved
and of uncertaintemperament,
so it is
Murne Cowan Was a Phenomenal Butter Fat Producer
with animals.
The restless,
nervous animal usually looks "poor".
Then there is the other extreme, the
animal that seems to make every atom
of food go far. Such animals grow fat,
or give great quantities of milk. Usually
it will be found, too. that these animals
are of equable dispositions. Race, and
breeding, and care will count of course
as factors in producing remarkable animals,
but sometimes an unknown equation
enters, that mysterious thing known
as the personal element, and the result
is a genius in the animal world.
It costs about two hundred fifteen
dollars a year, or 59 cents a day, to feed