The Profits of Dairy Farming.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 403, 28 January 1904, Page 5

The Profits of Dairy Farming.

Mr Ooleman Phillips, of Wairarapa, writing to the "New Zealand Dairyman," gives an instance of the profit profit per cow that can, under favorconditions, be obtained in the dairying industry. Fe says :■— Mrs Thompson and her family manage their dairy (without hired labor), as Mr Thompson is a sawmiller. The milk is sent into the Greytown Cheese Factory. This herd consists of 21 cows, but as some of the cows did not come in until after February, owing to late oalving, their milk could not be included in the factory year, Mrs Thompson averaging her cows at 18 for the factory year, disposing of their winter's milk elsewhere. She received from the factory £274 lis, which she estimated gave her .£ls 5s per cow; also £26 for pigs; 2s 6d per head for six calves sold, and four beifer calves saved and reared, worth 30s per head, or a gross return of £307 6s without the winter's milk. Divide this by 18 gives £l7 Is s|d per cow, but as some of the extra cows' Maich aDd April milk went to the factory hhe considers £l6 10s a fair average of the year's return during the factory year. Her land consists of different separate small pieces, totalling some 120 acres, upon which she runs other young stock besides her dairy cows. It was for the original tenant (with others) of one of those pieces of land, in the year 1881, that I had the honor of proposing the co-operative system of dairy farming in New Zealand. It would not be fair to divide the gross returns from her cows by 21, as Mrs Thompson has not considered her winter's milk. What she tells me is that she averages her direct factory return at £ls 5s per* cow. One of her best cows, I am glad to say, is a half-bred Holstein (although I wag told I should ruin my herd of cattle, when in 1888 I brought the Holsteins into the North Island for the use of dairy farmers). . . lam told of another instance near Carterton, where a farmer netted £l4 per cow. But, reducing Mrs Thompson's return to say £ls a cow for the season, what a loss results to the colony by rearing bullocks for three or four years and then only to get £lO a head for them.