FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 288, 28 April 1913, Page 7

FARM AND DAIRY.

KEEPING 38 COWS OX 32 ACRES,

This is how a Canterbury dairyman who keeps 38 cows on 32 acres feeds them: —The cows are feeding, on the whole, seven hours a day in the stalls. The rest of the time they are on the pasture, eacli cow with a good cover on her. This dairyman never buys any feed; he grows it all on his own small farm. The daily bill of fare is: Hay for breakfast, ensilage for dinner, hay and mangolds for tea. That's all; but every cow is given all she will eat up clean, and consequently the leisure of the cow is occupied in resting and making milk. She never has to hustle for her tucker. Need we repeat this is the method of a man who never had any practical experience of the work until he set to work on bis present farm? Before that he was on the road as a commercial traveller, and earlier still was an apprentice to the engineering business. Now he makes rather more net profit than two commercial travellers off thirty-two acres of land. Need we say that he reads all he can lay his hands on that refers to dairying, and that he has bought all the books on the subject that he can buy? —Dairyman.

MILKING MACHINES.

HINTS BY A FACTORY MANAGER,

A dairy factory manager (Mr. J. Mcllraith), of the Tweed River Co-oper-ative Butter Company, N.S.W., who considers the milking maehine preferable to hand milking if the machine is properly treated, gives the following hints as to the care of the machines: —

In the first place (says Mr. Mcllraith) an agent sells a machine to a dairy farmer, and in order to reduce the cost as much as possible, he specifies a small room in which there is scarcely room to turn. In this he puts down the engine, vacuum pump, separator and milk vat, on some cases with the milk vat almost touching the engine. This is a great mistake, and the one which is the cause of a very great deal of the trouble. It certainly saves a little space, a little belting, and perhaps a few pounds at first, but the effect of such arrangement is soon felt in the cream from such plant. The fumes from the engine's exhaust, and the odor from heated lubricating oils, coming in contact with the

milk in the vat, is quickly absorbed ,and the result is that the cream is tainted, and the longer it is kept the worse it becomes.

To overcome this the engine and pump should never be placed in the same room, with milk vat and separator, but the building should be large enough to allow of an airtight partition being placed between the engine-room and the ssparating room, and an overhead shaft fixed to drive the separator. The exhaust from the engine should be carried well above the roof, and straight up instead of horizontally. By doing this the fumes from the exhaust and other odors .will be prevented from coming in direct contact with the milk, thereby minimising the danger from that source. , It is a fact that where steam is used as the motive power, the taint referred to is never experienced, and another great advantage of steam is that there is always plenty of hot water for cleaning purposes, which, after all, is of the greatest importance, and it frequently happens where water has to be boiled on a fire outside i,t is too cold before using to be of much use as a sterilising agent.

Before rubber tubes and inflations are first used, they should be boiled at least twice for ten minutes, each time, and afterwards at least twice a week for -a similar length of time. When milking is finished a quantity of clean cold water should be drawn through the tubes to wash out the 1 milk, and then boiling water with washing soda, should be drawn through to thoroughly cleanse and sterilise them. They should then be kept in a bath of lime water till again required, when they should have a quantity of cohl water drawn them them before they are put on the cows. If this is done no taint of rubber Will be found in the cream.

Another important thing to watch is that no milk is allowed to get into the vacuum pipes, as it does at times through the over-filling of buckets or from broken inflations. If this should happen, no time should be lost before washing out the whole system, opening up the vacuum tank and leaving it open till next required.