FARM AND DAIRY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 65, 25 June 1910, Page 5

FARM AND DAIRY

Quoth a farmer anent milking machines: "Why, you can come down to the concreted bails now in your slippers and white shirt, get through your work in good time, and go back to the house spick-and-span as any town gentleman." That there is money in dairy farming in Taranaki is unquestionable. Unquestionable also is it that it entails labor of a kind that has probably no parallel in any other branch of farming. But another thing to be remembered is that the results in most instances represent substantial returns for the laibor (says the Waimate Witness). There is, for instance, the case of a young unmarried man who recently walked out of a farm in Taranaki £IBOO richer than he was four years ago,

Writes "Farmer" in the llawera Star: The machines continue to be a great factor in the conversion of pasture land into dairy farms. A South Taranaki correspondent wrote to a Wellington paper last week to the effect that some farmers were rejecting the machines on account of their proving unsatisfactory. Probatbly there are a few farmers who would reject any machinery before giving it a fair trial—simply because tney don't understand it and don't try to increase their knowledge. Happily there are not many dairy farmers of the weather-cock variety. The prejudice that existed a&ainst machine-milking has practically disappeared, and it is a pity_ that isolated instances of their rejection are given such publicity, as investigation would doubtless prove that the source of the troubles described could ibe located elsewhere. Some of the best cows we have in South Taranaki are machine-milked. It is quite true- that some cows will not give good results when milked by the machine. Their temperament is against it. Careful farmers take these animals to the yardß and get rid of them. Probably the few instances the correspondent referred to quotes of cows not 'being so profitable as if hand-milked are explained. His former friends purchase these animals that •won't tolerate the machine, and try to get good results from them. This they fail to accomplish, and then they blame the machine.

"I may state that my experience in: the Wairarapa has been that it pays far better to employ men to do milking than boys, and give the men a good wajge at that," remarked a well-known dairy farmer, in the course of a conversation. "A milker well paid will take an interest in your cows, treat them kindly, and get as much milk from them as possible, whereas the cheap man will 'slum' his work and the cows in a rough-and-ready sort of style." Shorthorns have ibeen selling well ill America of late, for at Waukesha, Wisconsin, forty-seven head averaged £IOO. The cow Missie of Browndale 13th fetched £275, and three bulls sold for £225, £2lO, and £205. At Aurora, Illinois, fifty-six head sold for £l2B apiece, the cow Woodileld Lovely 2nd 'selling for £6lO.

'ln no agricultural matter is the difference between the North Island and the Middle Island more marked than in the production of grasses (says the Ashburton Mail). A North Island farmer stated that in one of Jiis ipaddocks grass was sown twenty years ago, and the land has never been re-grassed in the meantime. This farmer has recently grown his first crop of roots, although his chief occupation has been fattening lambs and sheep, 'but he has been uvs to bring all these to perfection on grass. In the valleys around Wellington, and •from which the city's milk supply is drawn, there is land that has been sown down in grass for the Hast thirty years. Some of the land has grown fourteen tons of potatoes to the acres, and these valleys will in the future be the home of intensive farming cultivation; that is. when New Zealand farmers have beoom* more versed in the noble science of agriculture.