DAIRYING PROFITS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 34, 24 February 1937, Page 15

DAIRYING PROFITS

Sub-Marginal Cows Need Cullin^ BREED ONLY IHE BEST The subject of marginal and submarginal profits and marginal and submarginal land is discussed frequently. Marginal land may be describted as land that returns about enough to. pay its way.- The return froin sub-marg)nal land, howcver, is lesp thhn tbat. Applying these terms to dairy cow®, the records show that farmers a^e feeding and milking many marginal and.'eufrmarginal cows; in other wordp, cows which barely pay' their ^ay and those which are actually milked af a loss. The owner pf sub-margihal land is a tslave to his land, and the owner of sub-marginal cows i? a slave to his dairy herd. ' Oue ' is land j>6or and the other is cow poor, states the Australasian. The quostion might fre aeked by thpee cdncerned: At what production level does a cow frecome sub-marginal f To the man who relies on the family cow for milk and butter for hii)1 family, there may be no appare'nt mafginal production level; but to the man who owns and milka a dairy herd "for his

livelihood the marginal production level should be comparatively high. Even for the commercial dairy herd, the. marginal production level is npt constant. It varies much from time ;o time and frpm place to plase. II is influenced by cost of feed and labour, by price of produce (butter fat), and by the distanee of the manufactixring centrc; yet in a general way each dairy farmer should establish a production level, or a stp,hdard below which no cow in his herd can fall and still remain in the herd. A very earnest endeavour mbst be "made to raise our standards by a compfehensive system of herd tqstihg. It behoves all connected with dairying to give more serious thought to thi's asjpect of the iudaMixy. It must be acknowledged that unless this great industry is buiit On a Bouhd basis all the system and efficiency methods which may, from time to time, be introduced will never give it the sfcability so ueccssary to make it what it should be, not only to the country but to every individUal dairy farmer. The ultimate success of dairy ipg depends largely on a satiofactory production per cow being established. So let the slogan be, ' ' Breed from the best and cull the rest."