SCIENCE OF THE BYRE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 3, Issue 201, 5 June 1914, Page 1

SCIENCE OF THE BYRE.

<» [By R. J. EAMES]. "Practically, it is not handled from the time that the whole milk leave* the cow's udder until the skim milk reacheß the pigs' troughs." I was paying a casual call at Mr Henry's dairy farm on the fertile plains of Aka Aka-once literally named but now quite miscalled the Aka Aka Swamp. It was the Modern Dairyman who spoke, and the remarks again sent my thoughts revolving around the science of the cow-byre. The engine throbbed rythmically. The teat cups drew their regular stream of milk into the Jmachine buckets. The milk was emptied into the tank which feeds the separator, this being the one occasion upon which it is lifted by hand. From this point it is automatically pumped into the separator and the cieam from cne escape is immediately cooled and collected while the skim milk runs from another tap into pipes prepared for it and is carried by gravitation away to the vats which overhang the troughs in the pig-styes. So that all that remains is to turn a tap and give the pigs the fresh, warm skim milk that had left the udders ut the cows but a few minutes before.

This is msd rn milking and it calls to mennry some other and different days. Thirty years a*o my feeble fingers learnt at least the ludiments of the grinding art of milking. I can see myself now in an ill-kept byre, sitting on a dungcovered stool which crazily tried to stand on two legs and a half, my perspiring head pressed into the sweaty flank of a mongrel cow, my knees vainly trjing to hold a slippery bucket between them, whilst my grimy fingers achingly pressed at stuborn teats that had been but Inlf-washed. One taat.'l remember, was bleeding with its milk-giving, and when the offensive stuff was added to the other foreign matter in the bucket it made my unused stomach sick. The boss, who had a milk run in the township, calmly declared that "the strainer would take it all out," but for many months afterwards milk was eliminated from my scheme of diet. It was an unhappy introduction to the mysteries of the cow-byre and one from which I have never wholly recovered. But those were the days of dirty dairying in that district. Men and women and boys merely milked their cows. ThHt seemed to be the be-all and the end-all of life. Hygienics as applied to the dairy was a science unknown. It was the bad old period of clcd-hopptrism en the farm and of desperate drudgery in the dairy-drudgery and clodhopperism that were unrelieved by those attributes which now make our advanced farming attractive to men of brains. Nowadays, even though the milking still be done hy hand, dairying is no longer the dull and dreary existence that it used to be. The wider knowledge required if commercial cuccees is to be achieved has lifted the occupation to the higher spheres and placed it amongst those manual employments which daily call for the services of applied science.

Everbyody kuows but all do not realifle the astounding advancements that have been made in every department of human activity during the past half-century. In New Zealand during the last 15 years the scientific development of dairying has been phenomenal. Yet there are many estimable people in our cities (chiefly those engaged in the genteel pursuits) in whose minds modern dairymen are still fatuously catalugued as cow-puncheis, mere dull louts who milk cows for a living.

There is, it ought to he said, a great deal to be learnt of the art of milking by hand. I know some good people who have laboured at milking for years and have never found how to do it properly. I know some dear and delightful women who suffer in exactly the same way with their pianos. It is largely a matter of natural talent. There are many people who can milk cows properly; there are many others who are "merely milkers" and perhaps may never be anything else. They have neither the touch nor the sympathy, nor the capacity fur giving the firm, the tender, the patient and the intelligent treatment that those wonderful teats need if perfection is to be attained —perfection from the point 9oi view of maximum profit, of cow comfort, and of ease for the milker. Beyond all withdrawal milking by machinery is with us to stay. And good machine-milking appears to be proving more acceptable to the cows themselves than bad handmilking. Dairying is no longer a field demanding only the physical energies of the dullard. Side by side with the trained taients employed in the butter and cheese factories there is the Science of the Cow Brye.

"Practically il is not handl-:d from the time the whole milk leaves the cow'd udder until the tkim-milk reaches the pig's mouth." Can our amiable city folks realise what this means? Of course it means that the milking is done by machinery. It means also that at one step the airyman must add to hi 9 store of knowledge something of mechanical engineering. He must plan that his machinery will he so disposed that it will give him its greatest efficiency. Probably he n;ver before knew an air-cooled engine from a watercooled one and the principles of compre?sion and explosion were unknown to him. Benzine and kerosene were merchant's goods and did not represent potential power for his individual employment. And notwithstanding the agent's talk about the perfect simplicity of his particular engine there are a-hundred-and-one mechanical details that the dairyma.i must learn. This knowledge comes by painful experience when the ignition goes wrong, the piston seals, the exhaust valve fouls, some spring or other breaks, or any one of the dozen mysterious things that can happen to an engine docs happen. Having got some grip of his engine, his miking machine has to be understood. There are the problems of vaccum to be mastered, the pecularities of the pulsators to be considered, the hidden nricrobes that lurk in microscopic places to be annihilated.

Long before the dairyman got to this stage he had perhaps studied the dairy cow as a milk producer. Often hy dearly bought experience he had learnt to select cattle that were likeliest to give the biggest profits. He has need of enough veterinary knowledge to help his cows through their emergencies. Chemistry has to be called upon in the treatment of his soils and his produce. So that when a man knows nearly as much as the veterinarian he employs, \ when his education is advanced enough to make practical applications of chemistry, when he ha 3 turned his attention to the studies of the analyst, when he has become a mechanical engineer—then (provided, of course, that he has the qualifications of good health and strength, business capacity and capital) he is on a fair way towards becoming a successful Modern Dairyman. Was it too much to name his calling The Science of the Byre? Yet most inexpeiienced people fondly imagine that they could run the farm better than the farmer. My readers may have observed that there is an even more widely popular misconception about the -sase and certainty of running a newspaper.