FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 151, 2 December 1914, Page 2

FARM AND DAIRY.

In replying to a toast at a smoke concert at Manaia On Saturday night, Mr. E. Long made some caustic criticisms of some phases of the dairying business. There seemed to be a general idea, he said, that if a boy or a young fellow was not fitted for anything else, he should be made a dairy farmer, but he would like to say that it took a clever man to make a success of dairy farming nowadays at the present price of land. Then, as to the breeding of cows. He considered the method they had been following for some time, especially since the Jersey Herd Book had come into vogue, was the greatest of mistakes, and that actually the cows, regarded from a milk-producing point of view, wore going back. Speaking more particularly of four or five years ago, what happened was this: A small farmer would go to a sale and buy a pure-bred Jersey. Perhaps he had not so much money as some other man, but could pay £4O or £SO for a cow just because she had a .pedigree. When he came to milk her, he would find that she gave hardly enough to feed her calf, but, having paid so much for the cow, he could not afford to discard her, so the calf was reared and sold to someone else, jind so the thing went on continually. And the trouble was intensified in regard to bull calves. Something should he done to prevent this being continued, to the general injury of dairy herds.

Mr. Duncan Scott, remarking upon the competitions conducted by the A.i and P. Societies, thought all' the cows should be subject to test under purely natural and ordinary conditions, and