DAIRY ITEMS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9834, 17 September 1897, Page 2

DAIRY ITEMS.

"Weekly Press and Referee." Waimea Plains Dairy. Factory. The operations of the Waimea Plain 3 (Central Otago) Co-operative Dairying Company for the past season show a profit of £219 12s, out of which it is proposed to pay a dividend of 5% on the paid up capital ami :i further payment of id per lb of batter fat. The total quantity of milk received was 1,077,5471b5. which produced 105,8401bs of cheese. Dalepikld Dairy Company. The Daleficld Dairy Company, Carterton, have £1371 5s 6d to divide among suppliers, besides providing £164 paid the previous year, but not earned. The suppliers had been puid more in cheques on monthly advances than in previous years, and altogether they were £2,200 better off than they were twelve months before. The company's output of cheese had been sold at 4d per lb. LVCBKASING THE MIT,K YIELD.

In a circular addressed by the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, through Mr Thos. Brydone, to all their milk suppliers, the following advice is given : — "It Iβ not known accurately what the yield of milk per cow is in New Zealand, but it is somewhere between 350 and 400 gallons, whereas in Denmark the yield is 550 gallons, and this difference must ariso entirely from management, as we in New Zealand have very superior climate and soil to those of Denmark. In buying cowe, farmers should procure such as are known to be good milkers, and in keeping calves for their own use they should select them from the beet cows. It costs as much to feed a poor milker ac a good one. Then see that your balls are of the beat milking strains, whether Ayrshire or Shorthorn. In the dairying districts of Kiama (New South Wales) the farmers have established a herd of Shorthorns that has increased the production of milk in m very marked degree, and there is no reason why the farmers of Southland ehould not do the same thing. Up to the present far too little attention has been bestowed on cows during the winter. I consider that many farmers treat their cows most cruelly by starving them with cold and hunger. They provide no auitable food for them at all during the winter months, but simply let them run on the bare grass paddocks, where they have been all the summer, or turn them out on some poor cold tußSOoky ridges to find a living as best they can. . . By having a supply of winter food farmers are able fco produce milk at a eeaeon of the year when it is more valuable and so add very considerably to their income." Mr Brydone recommends mangolds and thousand headed kale for milk cows. They only require careful cultivation with proper manuring to be remunerative. Shelter sheds ehould be erected, where the cows could receive their roots and be protected in rough weather. Tlio Land Company are offering a prize of £10 10a to the supplier of milk next season who can produce the biggest averageof milk per cow from the opening till the closing of tho factory, provided that he keeps hie cow bails clean and in good order.