DAIRY FARMING.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1920, Page 9

DAIRY FARMING.

I DESCRIBED BY A TARANAKI FARMER A USEFUL BOOK, Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd., have just published a book entitled "Dairy Farming in New Zealand," by Mr. 1 W. D. Powdrell, M.P. for Patea. The writer is a. practical dairy farmer who has betn closely identified with the dairying industry from its inception in Taranaki, sharing the struggles and difficulties of the pioneers, taking an active part in the development of the industry, and participating in the success that has been achieved. Hence it is only to b* expected that the publication contains much valuable and useful information, both for the dairyman and the intending 'dciryman, and for that reason should have a wide and large circulation. The first chapter traces the history ot dairying in the Dominion, showing how share-milking came into being, an 1 ! explaining tjie system of financing. Speaking of the farmers' loan companies, of which there are seven in Taranaki, he gays that one of them is financing CO farmers, and lending over £82,000. "Although," he says, "they lend largely on the security of family labor, very few bad debts are made. Indeed, there was only one, and that for a trifling amount, during a period of ten years since the original company began operations."

QUALIFICATIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL DAIRYMEN. Under this heading, the writer says:— Of personal qualifications the first essential is the knowledge of cows and dairying, which only good training and experience can supply. To come down to detail, a good dariyman needs to be really fond of stock, showing every kindness and consideration to his cows at all times. The animals should be yarded and worked quietly without whips or dogs or unnecessary shouting and noise. Oftentimes our best milkers are smallframed nervous little caws, and such animals can easily be ruined by a bad-tem-pered man using a stick or his boot on diem when bailed up. Some cows come to be milked when called, but will never do so for a cruel or irritable milker. A good dairyman must be a hard worker. Ho must not be afraid of early rising, of long hours of monotonous labor, as well ns a good deal of cold or wet and mud at times.

Anther essential qualification upon which too great stress cannot be laid is cleanliness. Every worker in the milking shed and dairy must bo scrupulously deati in person and habits. The greatesi Care must at all times be taken to see Hi.it M . parts of the machines and utensils employed arc kept absolutely sweet and clean. This point will be elaborated when the practical work of the dairy farm is under consideration.

• INSTANCES OF SUCCESSFUL. DAIRYECG'. ' As proof of what a good strong faroearn, the fgllowing,figfires re'i'drd the gYbss earnings ofa, share-* milking Family from a herd of 20 cows,, including a share of the profits from pigs and calves also. For 1915-Jo,' .£774 Ma 3d; for 1916-17, £70(1 15s od; for 191718, considerably over i'o'iO. wiih bonus. Besides this the family had house and dairy produce, kept fowls and bees, "and had free grazing for several horses as well as ground for vegetable*. As another instance may be quoted the ease of a practical man with an industrious family who bought 100 acres of land at £55 per acre, paying only; £25 as deposit, thus leaving - over £10,400 owing at 5 per cent., besides which he borrowed £3OO on his cows. In the season 1912-13, starting with nearly all heifers, he paid for his cows by netting £349. His net profits for succeeding seasons were as follows:—1913-14. £371; ,1914-15, £549; 1915-16. £592; 191G-17, £681; 1917-18, £748. In other words, this man, starting with a few hundred pounds, netted an average of £587 per year'for the six years, and at the same, time reduced the debt on cows and land from £10,737 to £7,441. Another ease in point is that of three industrious brothers who, with a capital of £3OO, bought 392 acres of-land for £18,832, paying interest on this at 5 per cent., and also borrowed £I9OO on their eows, on which, they paid 8 per cent. For the four years they have worked this property their average annual profit has been £657 and during this time they have reduced their total debt from £20,732 to £18,104. As they have now paid off the 8 per cent, debt on the cows, and as they have also im : proved both farm and herd, they may reasonably expect even better Teaulta in the near future.

RIGHT KIND OF DAIRYING LAND. Referring to the quality of dairying land, Mr. Powdrell says:— The greatest available area of good dairying land is probably to be found in Southern Taranaki, most of which possesses all the factors named in the preceding section in a high degree, as is proved by the existence of factories every four or five miles. This district, however, is fairly closely settled, and the possibilities of expansion of the industry are greater in other less devsjoped regions. Among the first of these relatively developed districts admirably suited for dairying is the Hauraki Plains, where there is an area of 100,000 acres of very rich swamp land. Though for quality much of this land would be hard to equal, in very wet weather it becomes waterlogged, and the silt in yards and gateways gets worked up into a consistency similar to river silt after the tide has receded. The climate, however, is good, and there is probably no land better suited for cutting up into small areas for milkirtg, provided that in very wet weather the stock is housed or kept off the land, as too much treading by heavy stock tends to apoil ft very fine pasture.

THE DAIRY BREEDS. • ** I In this section Ihe author discusses the principal dairy pure breeds. The total number of cattle in New Zealand is 2,869,465, and of dairy cows and heifers 793,215. The purebreds are only a small proportion of the total stock. An interesting table is given of the distribution of the cattle. Taranaki has 1060 purebred Jerseys, 260 Friesian, 2 Ayrshire, and 440 Shorthorn. The total dairy cattle in Taranaki is 147,600, Auckland has 279,500, and Wellington 130,800. HERD-TESTING. It is strongly maintained that herdtertina—th« jptriodical reoording ef the

weight of each cow's produce together with a, butter-fat test from which data the production of the cow for the period is calculated—is the surest way of distinguishing the workers from the drones in the herd. In advising the adoption of herdrtesting, one is frequently met with the question: "Is it necessary to test? I believe I know my good cows and poor ones without that trouble." With a view to finding out just how far the dairyman's opinions coincide with actual results, the Government officers, when they started the Herd-testing Association at Dalefield, invited the memgers to give a list of those they considered were their best eight cows, placing them in order of merit. The majority entered into the spirit and supplied the details; a few members thought such action too risky. The results are very interesting and very instructive. No member picked his best eight cows, The case of one herd is quoted as an example: — Owner picked 3 of 8 best. Unselected cows gave 342.1, 327.6, 305.8, 300.41bs fat.

Selected cows gave 272,8, 236.7, 255.3 lbs fat.

Highest yield cow, selected, 236.7 lbs fat. Another owner selected as one of his best cows a cow that gave 269 lbs fat, but did not select another that gave about 100 lbs more.

This indicates that no dairy farmer is in a position to say that he knows \>w his cows should be placed, unless they have been put to the trial of the scales and the tester.

Oftcourse it is the application of what the test indicates should be done that raises the average yield per cow. Culling of the duffers should proceed rigorously, and sentiment should not be allured. It is quite possible—indeed, it has been proved in practice—-that many herds can be reduced by a third, or even by half, and yield as much profit as the original herd. Land is dear, feed is dear, and labor is dear, so tha„ to keep and milk a poor cow for a season may easily cost more than her produce is worth; so that her rejection and the distribution of her feed among the rest results in greater profits.

PASTURES. In Southern- Taranaki,' for every 13 acres of permanent pasture one acre of supplementary crops should he sown. Soft turnips have been found a most valuable food for keeping up the milk supply during dry weather in late summer. If the turnips are fed just after milking no taint is noticeable in the milk. Nine to twelve ounces of seed every, second coulter is the usual sowing, and Red Paragon and Lincolnshire Red filobn varieties o have proved most suitable.

Generally speaking, throughout Now Zealand it will be found that pastures supply feed from October to January; for feeding from February to 'May soft turnips and Italian ryegrass can bo grown .and utilised hi all districts. Swedes and mangels supply feed from June to September in most districts, although swedes are not a success in most parts of Canterbury, owing to the low rainfall, nor mangels in Southland, owing to the cold climate. On Banks Peninsula, excellent returns are obtained from cocksfoot alone, in normal seasons, all the year round, , ,

■■ • &AkANeD, T fi- WE" RATIOS. •-•• Cows may be looked on as machines' for converting fodder into milk. A row in full milk require* about one-tenth of the weight of her own body in food per day, that is, a cow weipiiinpr 1000 lbs need's 100 Uh of food per clay. In order to produce the maximum quantity of milk a cow requires to eat the right, proportion and weight of different foods, or in other words, she needs to be fed a balanced ration. This has been found to contain 75 per cent, water and 1"i per cent digestible or soluble matter which consists of 2 per cent carbo-hydrates, 2% per cent protein, and J per cent fat. No one food will supply exactly this proportion of ingredients. Hence feeding on one food alone cannot give the best result. Balancing the ration, therefore, involves mixing the food so as to providv the different ingredients in the corre'.'t proportions. If fed on maize alone a cow cannot get protein enough to maintain her full milk flow, while if fed on lucerne alone she would give her Ml milk supply, but ftt, an extravagant cost. Mixing the two, however, balances the ration and enables her to make full use of both foods. Similarly a mixture of grasses and clovers, when the latter are in bloom and before the grass seed is ripe, furnishes a balanced ration.

ECONOMICS OF DAIRY FARMING. With increasing, human and mechanical efficiency the number and variety of prod acta from milk are yearly increasing. Thus many factories where the main object is butter, are treating the skimmilk for the separation of casein. In this case, at present prices, the farmer receives an extra 2Jd per lb of butter-fat, j but of course he loses the skim milk for his calves and pigs. The whey from cheese-making or from casein' can be evaporated for the preparation of sugar of milk, and as 2.5 per cent of refined sugar can be obtained from the whey and the present English price is 7s per lb, and the wholesale price in New Zealand is from Is 3d to Is 6d per lb, this industry promises to grow and give increased value to the land and greater wealth to the dairy farmer. It is also possible in these days to separate the small amount of butter-fat from the whey, and whey-butter adds to the producers' profits. Besides these many products dried milk is rapidly • coming into favor, and this product is made largely from the skim-milk after Butter making, as weli as from the butter-milk. The butter togetherswith the dried milk returns as much as 4s per lb of butter-fat net to the dairy farmer in America on present prices. Several up-to-date factories are now being installed in New Zealand, and it is certain that this industry will be a growing one, especially where good roads and a large' milk supply warrant the installation of the costly plant required to manufacture this article.

Another valuable production is condensed milk, which will be manufactured in large quantities in the future, and from condensed milk milk-chocolate, lollies, etc., are made. In fact, New Zealand already has one of the largest condensed milk factories in the world, which produces a brand well-known for its excellence. t No country in the world is better suited for the production of milk and its products than New Zealand, where we have the best of land, an almost ideal climate and splendid roads, with vast quantities of milk to be obttained at the various centres from within a small district. As an illustration of a natural advantage it may be mentioned that on the easy slopes of Mount Egmont in Taranaki, where the carting of the milk is mostly down-hill, the cost of transport is reduced to. a minimum. We h«V« W many people croaking

that after the war our products would fall in price, but the dairyman's interests are well safeguarded by the many and varied uses that milk can be put to, so that if one product falls in price, we can turn our attention to others that are more profitable. FACTORS CONTROLLING PRICE OF DAIRY LAND.

The rise in price of dairy land in New Zealand has taken place through a, combination of circumstances. Any development of the industry which either directly increases the monetary return to the dairy farmer or which lowers his cost of production or coßt of living tends to raise the price he can afford to pay for his land, while increased competition of settlers for dairy land has the same effect. These the author enumerates at length.

THE RETURNS FROM DAIRYING.

The necessity of securing the very best of land for dairying has already been very strongly stressed, and it is beyond all dispute,that a djdry fanner on 60 acres of the best of Taranaki land, paying even what appears to be an excessive price of from £BO to £IOO per acre, will in many cases show a very fine profit at the end of the year, whereas a family on 50 acres of indifferent land without rent will oftentimes barely make both ends meet.' Not only is the grass of better quality on the rich land, but the seasons of growth are much earlier, as well as being longer; in other words, the good land responds more quickly to moisture and warmth, and the cattle are thus in better condition. Many farmers buy land because it is cheap, little realising that the cow likes succulent and tender food of good quality just as human beings do. Moreover, good land means more abundant food, so that more stock can be kept on a given area. Intending purchasers should always remember that it costs the same to keep a family on 50 acres of good land as on SO acres of poor land. For instance, if a man has 50 acres that will carry only one cow to four acres, or 13 cows, as well as horses, bull, calves, and supposing the 13 cows averaged £2O per cow or £260 per year (and this is an exceptionally high yield from poor land), the amount earned ig a little more than a bare living, if any rent or interest has to be paid. As a further proof of this contention, and an example to farmers dubious about high prices, the writes gives the returns for a farm of 48 acres of land within two miles of Hawera, for the season 1917-18 as £865, an average of £2B 17s per cow; or, after allowing one-third of the gross amount (£288) for milking, £75 for interest, on cows and for rates, and £IOO for extras such as depreciation, insurance, taxes, repairs, haymaking, calf and pig feed, crops etc., it will show a net profit of £402, not allowing for rent, or if this profit of £402 is capitalised it would show at present prices, with good cows, that an investor could purchase this farm at £167 per acre and still get 5 per cent, on his money. It will be seen that this herd gave the good average of 274 lbs of butter-fat per enw under good management and conditions; at the same time the land carried a little over one cow to 1A acres all the vear round.

A USEFUL BOOK. Mr. Powdrell supplies tables, compiled by a Government, official, showing the annual cost of keeping and milking ■ a dairy cow. These are very illuminating, and would well repay perusal by dairymen. As a matter of fact no dairyman can afford to he without this valuable Work, for it is brimful of helpful information, and has considerable value for reference purposes. Mr. Powdrell has lived —and is still liviug— a useful life, and this latest effort in the, literary field will place him still further in the debt of dairymen, whose, interests in the past be has always sought to protect and advance.