Selecting a house cow is usually a pretty personal preference. Some people want a lot of milk, so they would be looking at something like a Friesian. They give quite a lot, often more watery than creamy. Although having said that individual cows give different types of milk Me, I always liked a Jersey. Only the one bucket of milk with a very good cream content. Enough to make my own butter, have some buttermilk to use for cooking and good rich milk for the children to drink. Also had enough cream to make pure cream ice-cream, kept the neighbors in milk as well. Any left over went to the pig. A house cow is a very good investment. She will give you all the milk, butter, cream you want plus she can raise a calf for meat at the same time.
Regardless of what cow you are going to buy, there are certain attributes that are the best "buys". A good straight back, the saying is a square looking cow. However, you need to think of a rectangle more than a square with four feet. The udder is very important. After all, this is what you are buying. Preferably square meaning it hangs evenly. Four teats, I know you are saying like right they all have four teats. Not so! Some have extra teats on the udder, not that they work, but they do get in the way sometimes of milking.
The next thing to consider is who is going to be doing the milking. If it is a man, then he will normally prefer a cow with good size teats as most men have larger hands. That means a bigger cow usually than a jersey as they usually have little teats.
After that you can start milking your cow. Some come broken in to a head bale, some are not. All our cows used to just stand there munching their dairy meal. We didn't leg rope them either. Some people tie the leg on the side you are milking back. We have had various cows and all of them have their own little habits. Quite a few would only milk on one side. After being threatened with a kick, I would try the other side to find that suited the cow. One we tied around the neck to start her, as she wasn't broken in to milk. We didn't have a bale, so we just tied her up and started milking.
