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The ḥadīth shows that every sale involving deceit is forbidden, and the party who has been deceived is given the option to rescind or affirm the transaction.
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The buyer’s period of choice—whether to return the animal or keep it—lasts three days from the moment he discovers the engorgement stratagem.
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As for the seller, the contract remains binding on his side, for nothing in his conduct invalidates the sale or obliges him to take the animal back.
Disagreement among the scholars:
The majority of jurists—including the three Imams—hold that if the buyer returns the animal he must also return one sāʿ of dates to compensate for the milk that was in the udder, basing themselves on this very ḥadīth.
Abū Ḥanīfah and his followers maintain that the buyer returns the animal only, with nothing else, arguing that the milk belongs to him in place of the fodder he provided. They declined to follow the ḥadīth because, in their view, it conflicts with analogical reasoning: milk is a fungible good, so indemnity should be made with its like.
The response is that a sound report from the Lawgiver is itself the primary principle to which one must defer.
Al-Khaṭṭābī said: “When a ḥadīth is authentic and firmly established from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, there is nothing but to submit to it. Every ḥadīth is an independent source in its own right, to be judged on its own merits; it is impermissible to challenge it with other principles that seem to oppose it, or to dismiss it because it lacks parallels or precedents. The very principles became principles only because the Sharīʿah brought them, and abandoning the ḥadīth in favor of those principles is no more justified than abandoning them for its sake.”
Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: “The authenticity of this ḥadīth is unanimously agreed upon, and the objections raised by those who decline to act upon it are baseless.”