FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1922, Page 12

FARM AND DAIRY.

FRENCH FIRMS WANT BUTTER. A REPRESENTATIVE IN AUSTRALIA. . . t Although French butter is quoted’ on the London market —and the butter makes a good price in London—French firms and Belgian also, are anxious to participate in the handling of Australian butter. Representatives of a French firm of produce merchants arrived in Melbourne about a fortnight ago, with a view to arranging for consignments of butter direct from Australia to France. It is stated that most of the Continental firms are not prepared to purchase butter outright, and that in the case of the French visitors their idea is to make cash advances up to 75 per cent, or 80 pet cent., and remit the balance of the proceeds when, sales are made. A large portion of the butter exported from Australia to the United Kingdom is .shipped on consignment, and drawn against to about 75 per cent, of its value at time of shipment, and as the French firm apparently can do no better the general inclination may be to stick to the old channels. It is, however, quite possible that Victorian exporters of butter may send some small parcels to France, as was done last year, but they consider that sales must be outright, and conducted on letters of credit. Tt is not likely that Continental buyers will look to New Zealand for butter. Because of the absence of direct shipping, in any case, business on a consignment basis to France would not appeal to the New Zealand factoriesThe fact that Continental firms have sufficient interest in the matter to send representatives to Australia is an indication of the changed conditions that have followed upon the war. ,if we cannot do business with France with butter we may be able to trade in frozen meat.

INTENSE FARMING. DAIRYING AND FEEDING. The trouble with the average country dairyman in the city milk zone is that every dry spell finds him short of fodder, and a buyer ,on ' the market to keep his cows going by hand-feeding. An instance of the other side of the picture is brought to light by Mr. R. N. Makin, inspector of agriculture, from the Camden district. New South Wales.

Captain Russell, on a dairy farm of 80 acres at Kirkham Lane, has demonstrated what can be done by intensive culture and the conservation of green fodder. On this area there are 46 cows, one bull, five heifers, and 11 horses, all in good condition, and fed entirely on what is grown oh the place. With the exception of some bran purchased in March. 1921, no fodder has been brought for two years. Silago is the great stand-by on the farm, together with lucerne and clover hay- When available, chaffed green corn stalks are fed, and oats in the late winter and early Spring. About 500 tons of silage are now conserved on the property, some of which was carried over from last year. The silos are not of orthodox type, but brick buildings that were on the farm, converted by alterations, and additions into suitable shapes. The silage is of excellent quality, being well cut and packed. As Captain Russell is dependent upon hired labor for all farm work, he was able to give Mr. Makin a very close estimate of the cost of putting down the silage. Taking his crop Of corn at 20 tons per acre yield—a low estimate —he figures out the cost at 5s per ton to grow, and 8s 4d to cut the crop, cart in, chaff, and fill the silo, making a total of 13s 4d per ton. REMOVING OBSTRUCTION IN THROAT OF COW. The first tiling to remember is that the parts of the throat are very delicate. The greatest care must be exercised, otherwise permanent injury, and even death, will follow careless or rough treatment. If the obstruction is still in the throat a gag should be put in the mouth, and while the head is held, the hand should be inserted into the back of the mouth and the object withdrawn. If the obstruction has got beyond this, and is in the upper part of the gullet, an assistant should try and work it up into the hack, of the throat so that it can be reached and withdrawn. In all other cases attempts should be made by outside manipulation to get the obstacle to move either upwards or downwards. To assist this a little oil may be given to lubricate the tube. When the object cannot be reached. or moved, the proper instrument, a well-oiled probang, should be passed slowly and gently over the back of the throat and down the Oesophagus till tho offending body is reached, and then use with a continuous steady pressure. On no account attempt to use it with sudden jerks as a piledriver. A probang may be obtained from any good veterinary chemist. The cost is a very small insurance premium against the possible loss of a valuable cow.

THE MILKING SHORTHORN. Our dairy farmers should keep constantly in their memory that in England there exists a race of broad-backed, deep-ribbed, raellow.-fleshed cows with capacious udders, and that those are the cattle that contribute the bulk of the milk that is supplied to the great cities of that country. We know that in almost every one of our herds that there arc individual cows that come up to a high standard of general utility. Such cows thrive well and milk well. They are the animal* that we should aim to breed, and the English Shorthorn alone provides the means. THE COW—A HARD WORKER. People seldom think of the dairy corf as a hard-working animal, yet it is a fact that she works harder than other domestic animals. Every year she gives from five to ten times her weight in milk, containing as much actual dry matter as do the bodies of two or thre rt steers. Tt requires approximately the same amount of energy to produce 201 b of milk as it does to plough an acre of land. This gives us some conception of the enormous amount of work the cow does and indicates why she should be gell fed and cared for.

HERD-TESTING. MORE AND MORE A NECESSITY. The keen competition at present existing throughout human enterprise is more and more rendering it necessary to reduce the cost of production to the lowest possible point consistent with quality. To the dairy farmer this means that he must improve his herd by fixing, each year, successively higher standards of productivity which every cow must reach, or suffer rejection. In other words, since a poor cow costs as much to keep as a good one, the dairy •farmer must in his own interests do two things—first he must weed out the low producers from his herd, and secondly he must lay the foundation of his future herd in the heifers produced by mating his best cows with a purebred bred bull of good strainTHE GOOD OLD DAYS. In the old days o£ cheap land and labor every kind of cow could pay its way even at the low prices paid for but-ter-fat. To-day the position is entirely different; the dairyman has high-priced land and not infrequently low prices for butter-fat; and in addition to that he has about half his herd earning just about half of their feed bill. Tlhe old saying, “ a cow is a cow,” may be a true one, but it is unsafe to follow in these times. A cow is a cow, but some cows are more cows than others. It is the difference in capacity and quality that makes the difference between profit and loss, and these differences are so great that it is not safe to guess a cow’s production. It cannot be too strongly maintained that systematic herd-testing—the recording of the weight of each cow’s milk together with a butter-fat test —»is the only sound logical way of weeding out the wasters. Of course, it is the application of what the test indicates' should be done that raises the average yield per cow. It has been proved in practice that many herds ean be reduced by one-third or even by a half, and yield as much profit as the original number. Land is dear, feed is dear and labor is dear, so that to keep poor cows is only courting sure and certain disaster. Furthermore, no farmer is in a position to say that he knows his cows, unless they have been to the trial of the scales and the tester.

RECORD NOT HEIGHT. Difficulty will be experienced in replacing the wasters, and this is where testing plays an important part. Animals can be purchased on the basis of their records, or. if one depends upon the increase of his own herds, he can select from dams having the best records. If it were possible to get a small herd of 20 cows to yield 7001 b of fat at 2s per lb butter-fat. and allowing two acres of the best New Zealand land to each cow, the capitalised value of such land would be £7OO per acre, plus the capitalised earnings from pigs and calves—less depreciation and the cost of wages of two men. Therefore, it is obvious that the price a man can pay for land is to a large extent governed by his own management: the class of cows he is milking: and incidentally the class of bull he intends to use to improve his herd. The latter certainly must not be a scrub bull: it must be a hull with a proved butter-fat record. If a farmer paid £5OO for a bull from a record milking strain, and obtained say 30 calves in a season from good cows true to breed, the first year’s stock should ultimately repay him for his outlay and leave him an everlasting result on his future herds. At the present time the farmer is too often guided by size’ in a beast and what the butcher will pav for him when his days with the herd are over; it is record not size that it wanted. FEEDING—WHAT IT DOES. The animal which, for want of proper feeding, is stunted in its youth, will be weak of constitution, incapable of assimilating a due quantity of food when full grown, and will in its turn beget weakly offspring. Thus it may be seen that the question of judicious feeding is a much more far-reaching one than it would seem to be at first sight, and. indeed, that the question of successful farming is inextricably mixed up with the question of stock feeding from youth to age. The real point for careful study is economic feeding, and the economic feeder is the man who supplies to his growing stock an abundance of the elements required for the building up of bone, muscle and blood; to his dairy stock, foods which will induce an ample flow of milk; to his fattening steers and swine, sheep and poultry, foods which, will increase the quantity of flesh, intermingled with fat; and to his working animals or beasts of burden, the foods which are best calculated to give strength and endurance.

Dairy farmers with plentiful supplies of supplementary fodders for their herds speak of the present winter as one of the best they ever romernber, and cow* generally are in good order (says the Southland News). There has been almost an entire absence of wet blustery weather this winter, and it is this sort of weather that knocks the condition off stock in Southland during winter time. An exchange says a movement is on foot in the South Island for the establishment of compulsory district rabbit boards so as to enable the rodent to be coped with more effectively. It is stated that large areas have been given over to the ravages of the pest and that in several striking instances the stock-bear-ing capacity of wide tracts of country has decreased very considerably as the result- of the present impossibility of reducing the number of rabbits. During the recent period of land speculation a farm on the Manawatu side of the ranges changed hands so many time- that within five years agents’ fees and stamp duties amounted !to £l5 per acre. The property was an attractive one and it had a new owner often as many as four and five times a year. At the time ojf the transaction that brought the coirimissions to the amount stated the seller had only been I in possession three months. The extraordinary demand for most primary products during the war led to developments all over, the world. Large meat works, for example, were established at Nanking, on the Yang-tse-Kiang. also in Brazil and at Mauritius. J South Africa and Uganada are expanding. England is the best and safest cus- , tomer in the world, and every seller I tries the English market first. Unless, I therefore, we are able to establish a demand for our products, based on their special qualities, competition with other, I combined with the decreased purchasing power of Great Britain, will mean [lower prices. New Zealand lamb and I butter should make a special market I lor themselves.