OLD-TIME MILKING RECORDS.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 7, 13 May 1893, Page 3

OLD-TIME MILKING RECORDS.

Stock-owners of the present day are too apt to assume that all improvements in our cattle, either for the block or the pail, have been effected by breeders of the present century. “ Here are some reports of the produce of milch cows in the last century,” says the writer of -c Scraps ” in the Live Stock Journal, and he makes the pertinent enquiry, “ Can we beat them ? ” :—“ Colonel Foliar ton, in a survey of Ayrshire, 1790, writes: —‘ Some Dunlop — i.e., Ayrshire cows—give 34 English quarts, and even 40 quarts in a day have been

given by a special cow.’ Baron d’Alton, in his Midlothian survey, states that cows of this same breed have been known to give 36 English quarts. In 1791 the record was published of Mr Wakefield’s dairy of 100 cows, which averaged 678 gallons apiece, a very wonderful record for such a number. It was said of this dairy that the longhorn section of it averaged 730 gallons per cow, and the shorthorn 821. In the Rural Economy of Gloucestershire (Marshall) a small dairyman produced, from seven cows, 3ocwt. of cheese, besides the milk used in the family. In Gloucestershire, at this time, it was held that it required 149-J gallons of milk to make lewt. of cheese, so that these cows averaged 74'7-f gallons apiece. AMr Green, near Liverpool, also had a dairy of shorthorn cows which averaged 821 gallons. And Mrs Chevalier, of Aspal, Suffolk (the wife of the clergyman who endowed English farmers with the Chevalier barley) had a Suffolk cow which gave, in 12 months, 994 gallons of milk.”