HERD-TESTING.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4860, 5 August 1925, Page 3

HERD-TESTING.

HAURAKI PLAINS GROUP&

LOW AVERAGE SHOWN, The return published in the “Dairyfarmer” of the resultsi of the testing of cows in the 1924-25 season by the N.Z. Herd-testing Association should give Haiiraki Plains dairy farmers food for iserious thought. The association tested 1257 herds, representing 55,745 cows, and pf those herds 105 (representing 5029 cows) were in the four groups on the Hauraki Plains.

The average production of the cows tested on the Plains is 18.991,b of but-ter-f,at below the average for all the cows tested by the association, and is only 8.531 b above the figure at which a cow is termed unprofitable. The percentage pf unprofitable cowe discovered in the season’s test was 37.73, and it is reasonable to suppose that the proportion on the Plains is much higher. The 241 cows in the lowest herds of the four Plains groups averaged 135.811 b for the season, againsf the average for the lowest herd of the whole 44 groups of 143.151 b, while the average production of the highest herd in each of -the Plains groups was 290.441 b, compared with the average of 320.711 b for the highest herd in all the groups.

There may have been a good reason why One of the Plains cows tested by the association produced only 60.991 b of butter-fat in 275 days, but for a Plains man to milk 40 cows for an average return of 84.661 b of butterfat for the season —well, it shows the value of herd-testing.