OUR STAPLE INDUSTRIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 277, 13 April 1911, Page 3

OUR STAPLE INDUSTRIES.

EURAL NEW ZEALAND UNDER 1 REVIEW. No. 25. [All Rights Keserveil.] (By R. J. EAMES). ' WELLINGTON: A PROVINCE ' PROGRESSIVE. CONDITION'S OF DAIRYING, Generally speaking, the conditions of dairying arc not so impressive as they are in those parts of Taranaki where the J production of butter and cheese consti- ' tutes the sole means of livelihood of fanners, occupying large stretches of contiguous dairy country. At Palmerston ' North the New Zealand Farmers' Dairy 1 Union has one of its centres, but the fat i from which its 330 tons or so of butter 1 is made annually is drawn from various points of a district about 50 miles in length. There are a good many pro- ' prietarv concerns operating—more in . proportion than in any other district in the North Island. The farmers have not got on their feet, co-operatively 1 speaking, as firmly as dairymen have done elsewhere. The Kongotea Co. (cooperative) offers the strongest example of the march of the industry, and the 65 suppliers who serve this one-roof factory express each day the value of butter-fat to the district. At Eketahuna the Dairy Union has a fine up-to-date' factory, spaciously built iji concrete. In size this establishment has provided for whatever increase in dairying is probable for some years to come. The bulk of the cream comes by rail from near Danuevirke in the north, to Cross' Creek in the south. With a few conspicuous exceptions—such as the Eketahuna factory—the factory buildings and appliances and the farm cowsheds and appointments are not yet so imposing as they might be, but there can be no doubt of the improvements that arc being made annually, and that the dairying industry will play a much greater part—big as that part is now—in the future of Wellington district. CO-OPERATIVE PIG - FARMING. There is in progress at Taratahi, near Carterton, in the Wairarapa, an experiment which will be of interest to every dairy factory supplier in New Zealand—an experiment in co-operative pig-farm-iiig. in the course of these articles it has more than once been pointed out) that the great potentialities of pigbreeding do not appear to be fully realised by farmers throughout the North Island. This is not because the farmers do not study and understand their own business; it is because a very great number of the men on the land, and particularly of the new men, are not farmers. There are two things that nearly every man thinks he could do, and do well — namely, run a farm and run a newspaper. But one has only to converse with the' successful, practical men, men of - resource and experience, to become convinced that the reason of most failures and incomplete successes by men on the land is that they have not realised that farming docs not call for muscles so insistently as it calls for brains. Taratahi factory is a cheese-making concern, and wlicy"was not popularly regarded by some of the suppliers as being worth feeding to pigs. Thus it happened that last season a good deal of this by-pro-duct went to waste. Several things occurred to the directors. Those who took . whey home had an expenditure of time in awaiting their turn, and again in feeding the pigs, and also an expenditure of vehicular effort in haulage. Besides, the use of the milk cans for the cartage of whey—not always fresh-smelling—was not viewed with favor. These and other considerations prompted the directorate to extend the principle of co-operation to pig-raising. In pursuance of this determination a piggery was established close to the factory, ao that the whey, fresh and sweet, is gotten to the troughs by gravitation. Thers are 12 "pens," eight yards wide by four or five chains long, with sleeping sheds at one end and concrete feeding-troughs at the other. In February there were some 340 pigs in the yards, graded into their divisions from the newcomers to the finished baconers, ready to be entrained to the curing works. The Berkshire i* chiefly used and no one would desire to see a finer lot than the fifty or so which were just topped off at the time of writing. Their feeding? That is interesting. After being weaned, and until they turn the scale at about 401bs, their daily fare is whey and molasses, with an occasional handful of wheatmeal thrown in. From 401bs onwards until they reach 1201bs (live weight) their sole fare (the chairman of directors informed me) is Whey! Thereafter they have more whey, with wheatmeal to harden them off. Being relieved of the necessity of rooting for a living, it was not surprising to see the stock doing so well on their daily round of eating and sleeping in sweet contentment. The healthy conditions under which the pigs are kept must necessarily add to the worth of the product. So far there has been no breeding, the young stock having been bought as required. The expert engaged to look after the pigs attends to the buying. It is intended, however, to go in for breeding if the results of the experiment as now carried on points to success in that direction. So far as finance is concerned, the arrangements were made with the bank, on guarantee, on a similar basis to that upon which the factory finance itself rests. So far there are no figures available to show how the venture will pan out, the working having only been in operation since September last. It was estimated, however, that the clear profit to the company would be about 10s per pig. The pig-profits will, of course, be distributed on the basis of the butter-fat supply.. The young stock cost about 14s Gd a-piece to buy and the first 300 sent out. averaged about £2 per baconer. A»ked if the baconer paid best, the chairman replied: "Well, I am satisfied that this year we would have done very much better out of pork." In ITawltc's Bay recently a proprietor of a cheese factory complained that one objection which some farmers had to supply a cheese factory was that the whey was not a sufficiently valuable by-pro-duct —as compared with skim-milk —for pig-raisins. The opinion of the chairman of"the Taratahi directorate was asked. "Skim-in he said, ''is very much better than whey." Suppliers and directors throughout the Dominion will watch with interest the result of Taratahi's experiment in co-operative pig-raising.