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DAIRY FACTORY REPORTS

To The Editor

. Sir, —For those engaged in the dairying industry, dairy factory reports make interesting reading. Some remarks made by various chairmen are deserving of comment. Take, for instance, Mr A. M. Weir (Menzies Ferry), who said it would be noticed that the balancesheet showed a reduction of a halfpenny per lb in the bonus. Suppliers would probably be seeking the cause of this, since the price was the same as last season’s. The reason, he said, was that their average test had jumped from 3.855 to 3.955; if the test had remained at 3.8, they would have paid out 18.51 d instead of 17.78 d. Mr Weir is taking it for granted that he would get the same quantity of cheese from the lower-testing milk as he did from the higher, which is iriere presumption on his part. Later in his remarks he stated that costs had risen by £3/12/7 a ton, making a total on the factory output of more than £1550, or approximately £5O a supplier. Here is a wizard of finance who states that with £1550 in added costs he could still pay out the same as last year, had the test remained the same. Menzies Ferry shareholders are not as gullible as all that. Why does he not hand out this secret formula of dealing with addpd costs to other factory directorates who are groaning under the burden? Again, Mr Weir stated that the upward trend of the test was also adversely affecting the yield because they had to pay more for their butterfat than was represented in the cheese returned. I was always under the impression that the value of cheese returned determined the price of butterfat. It is evident that Mr Weir is one of. those who has yet to learn that high-testing milk, although giving a lower yield of cheese per lb of fat, does not necessarily mean lower output and lower income, but, on the contrary, increased production and increased income from the same quantity of milk. This is well exemplified in the Boggy Burn chairman’s remarks, in which he stated that although the intake of milk was 39.0551 b short of last year’s figure, suppliers had as a result of higher butterfat tests received £lO5 more than for the 1938-39 season. In concluding, Mr Weir mentioned the fact that Menzies Ferry had increased its output by 200 tons during the last 20 years, although the number of suppliers and the number of cows remained practically the same. This is a very interesting statement coming after some of his previous ones. Why did not Mr Weir give the reason for this huge increase? No doubt better farming methods followed by better feeding of animals contributed largely to this increase, but why was Mr Weir not candid enough to state how much was due to the increased test ? The secretary has | the figures and it would be quite a simple matter to put them before shareholders. In the August issue of the Exporter I notice a large advertisement by the Ayrshire Breeders’ Association advising dairy farmers to milk Ayrshires, the ideal milk for cheese production with a 4 per cent. test. Yet at Menzies Ferry we have a former president of that association telling shareholders that a 3.9 test is too high for cheese making. Have Mr Weir’s recent importations lowered his test, or is he going to jettison his favourite breed and fall for the black and white 1 —Yours, etc., BUTTERFAT. September 15, 1940.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ST19400917.2.16.1

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Southland Times, Issue 24233, 17 September 1940, Page 3

Word count
Tapeke kupu
588

DAIRY FACTORY REPORTS Southland Times, Issue 24233, 17 September 1940, Page 3

DAIRY FACTORY REPORTS Southland Times, Issue 24233, 17 September 1940, Page 3

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