Little Hope For Fewer Milkings

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29844, 9 June 1962, Page 7

Little Hope For Fewer Milkings

The prospect of producing a strain of high-producing cows that only had to be milked once a day did not seem bright. Professor I. L. Campbell, professor of dairy husbandry at Massey Agricultural College, said at the Lincoln farmers’ conference in an address on overseas research in dairying.

Research workers in Sweden had shown 40 to 50 per cent, reductions in milk yield with once a day milking. The same workers were now investigating eliminating one milking a week—‘‘to give farmers Sunday morning in bed"—but short term studies at Reading had shown milk yield was depressed up to 10 per cent, over the following three to seven days. The milk production in a cow was like the momentum of a flywheel if it was checked it took some time to build up speed again, he said. In Holland milk was being tested with a quick test for protein content in an effort to arrive at a fairer method of paying suppliers of milk for cheesemaking. This could give valuable information on breeding cattle for milk of various fat and protein content.

The introduction of the Charollais breed into Britain for tests with Jersey cross calves for beef production was causing much interest and in Britain Friesian bulls

were being progeny tested to assess their qualities of beef as well as milk production.

Meat production from dairy cattle was being studied in Europe in various ways. “A visitor from one of these countries would, I am sure, be tempted to ask whether we have made a thorough examination of the scope for improvement in the meat-producing capacity of our dairy breeds. We hsve not done much yet,” Professor Campbell said. Professor Campbell, who recently returned from study leave overseas, said he had been particularly interested in the progress and ideas on the problem of assessing the nutritive value of foodstuffs for farm animals.

The amount of a particular food that an animal would eat voluntarily varied. Palatability was a factor. For instance, cows eating silage would not eat to capacity. Overseas research was being done on digestibility, the speed of passage of feed through the gut, the amount of digesta in the whole digestive tract and the type of fermentation promoted in the rumen.

Introduction of mechanisation and some degree of automation in feeding dairy cattle was promoting research into the qualities and fermentation of ground, crushed. heated, pelleted and waferised feeds.