FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 August 1921, Page 7

FARM AND DAIRY.

THE MANUTAHI COMPANY. Following are the statistics for the past season of the Manntahi company: Lbs milk. 6,568,235, previous year (7,350,773); lbs butter-fat, 246.286.3 (274,942.7); lbs cheese, 567,648 (724.025); lbs milk to lb cheese, 10,290 (9.898); lbs cheese to lb butter-fat, 2.9 (2.64); cheese teat, 3.739 (3.740); weight cheese, 253 tons Bcwt Iqr 41b (323 tons 4cwt 2qr 11b); weight whey butter, 7 tons 3 cwt (7 tons 2cwt Iqr); weight creamery butter, 14 tons 3 cwt 2qr 91b (1 ton 19cwt 2qr). Mr. S. C. Tonka, the chairman, said the company had gone back in its milk supply. This was not due to milking fewer cows, but was partly due to the dry autumn, and in his opinion was mainly due to the underfeeding of the herds in the fall of the year. To | remedy this defect some were recommending the sowing of turnips, maize, etc. His opinion was that they should grow lucerne, and still more lucerne. His experience had been that this district was admirably suited to the growing of this splendid fodder crop. The time had come when they must run two cows where previously they had run one, and to attain that end they must grow lucerne extensively. Another point that was constantly overlooked was the top-dressing of the land. Basic slag and other artificial manures were a great price, but they •were continually overlooking the fact that a great deal of natural manure was being run into the gully or was being lost in some other way. Some jof this manure was even wasting in their own cowyards, and he supposed that not one per cent, of the farmers in Taranaki were returning that manure to the land as it should be returned. The majority of them endeavored to get it into the gully as qivekly as possible, thereby losing hundreds of pounds. The prospects for the coming year were very bright, and one factory had received an offer which would allow them to pay out 2s sy s d per lb of butter-fat. A Wairarapa farmer who has received account sales showing that his wool netted a penny a pound in London is warmly congratulating himself on his good fortune. Practically all the dairy companies in the Bush district showed a shrinkage in butter-fat received last year owing to the unfavorable season. The extraordinary high price for dairy cows in England is thus explained by an English paper:—“The situation is only what farseeing persons said it would be. One has only to look back on those days of control when milk fetched more money than it is ever likely to do again, and the calf, which is indispensable in the production of milk, was an obstruction and a nuisance; so it was led away to the butcher. Calves would do for sausage meat, and there was money in the skins; so butchers bought them and short-sighted farmers, who now grumble when they have to pay a big figure for a dairy cows, sold their calves for slaughter because they wouldn’t spare a drop of milk to rear them. The only way to bring the price of dairy cattle down is to increase supply, and the only way to do this is to rear heifer calves.

The opinion was expressed by a farmer at Tuesday’s sale that until feed is a lot more plentiful there can be no improvement in store stock, which he considered was at zero just now so far as prices are concerned.—Levin Chronicle.