FARM NOTES.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2789, 12 May 1911, Page 3

FARM NOTES.

The directors of the Nelson Dairy Company, owners of the factory at Brightwater, have decided to offer the i property for sale as a going concern. A dairyman was fined ,£3 and costs at Christchurch for selling milk with less than the standard percentage of butteriat. Mr Bishop, S.M., said that if the defendant could not see that his milk was. not up to the standard, he had better get out of the business. The Masterton Dairy Company is now using coke for the generation of steam at the local butter factory. It finds that, with wood at its present price, coke is the more economical fuel Mr E. Griffiths, of New Plymouth, has just purchased in Jersey for Mr Charles Goodson, of Hawera, the yearling Jersey bull which won first prize over the island. He is a son of great champion Noble of the Islands, and is the first prize winner over the whole of Jersey yet purchased for New Zealand. A gentleman who has visited a good deal of the North Island gives it as his opinion that high as the price of land is at present in many dairying districts, the probabilities are that it will go still higher in the near future, the principal factor in the enhanced value being the advent of the milking machine, by which the cost of Idbour is likely to be materially reduced.

An aged cow, the property of Mr Johnston Wylie v of Edendale,'is the holder of a splendid milking record: In the three successive seasons prior to last year, after coming-in in September, her average daily yield in April was four gallons. Last year, her record was not taken, as she was being accustomed to machine milking. This year the cow calved in September, and on the 16th of April her yield for the day was 3 8-ioth gallons. Mr Wyhe is prepared to vouch for these figures, which speak for themselves.

According to an exchange, it is the ambition of a Palmerston dairy farmer to have a herd of ioo purebred Holsteins on his farm in the course oi time, " 1 shall not rest until I own such a herd," he is reported to have said recently, " because it is my firm conviction that the Holstein is the best paying cow at the present day. If any oi them turn out unsatisfactory at the pail you can turn them into beef, which is more than can be done with the Jerseys. I know a little about all the breeds, but give me the Holsteins every tune, notwithstanding the present craze for Jerseys." A good dairyman needs lots of backbone. Perhaps when he gets someone to test his cows with a Babcock tester he may find that his favourite " brindle," that had twin calves last year, is giving milk with only two and a half per cent. of butter-fat, while " Spot," that his wife brought along when she was married, and that he has always " run clown " as a poor producer, yields a five or six per cent. milk. One cannot always judge of the richness of milk by its looks, you know, and such revelations sometimes occur. And it is then that the dairyman needs the backbone to discard the unprofitable kind.