The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1912.

Evening Star, Issue 14963, 24 August 1912, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1912.

Thk Hon. W. V. Masset, as Minister of Agriculture, has A Leak in the announced tho GoBucket. vCrnment's intention to establish a model dairy farm and model dairy herd in Taranaki. The idea is an excellent one, and it would be still more so if the same steps were taken in regard to the South Island. There is urgent need for something bring done to improve the breed of cattle in New Zealand. Firmly established as the Dominion is as an exporter of dairy produce, those mosl closely connected with that industry admit without hesitation that our rattle are deteriorating, and they attribute that deterioration to the initiation and rapid spread of the dairying industry. Numbers of people have gone in for it, not from any special aptitude or knowledge, but because they have been tempted by tho returns made procurable by the high prices ruling of late years on the London market, and by the easy and cheap means of reaching that market—thanks to the system of factory management and the efforts of the Agricultural Department, together with the facilities afforded by the shipping companies. In many cases the dairy farmer has had to pay extreme prices for his land. Idealising this—and too often the pressure of the burden never allows him to forget it for an instant—he seeks to keep down expenses in other directions, and in hundreds of instances he makes the fatal mistake of breeding from bulls which have no earthly claim to be found among the dairy herds of a country like New Zealand. It is false economy, and if the dairy fanner could spare time from watching the market quotations, he would admit it himself. But in a great many instances he would excuse himself on the ground that possibly he will be selling out before long—in fact, as soon as he can sec a chance <>i getting out at a profit. And then some other would-be primary produce: comes in and carries the place on in the same hand-io-mouth fashion. It i? not scientific farming, nor is it true progress. This kind of thing obtains much less, perhaps, in the South Island rhan in the North, where the cankei of laud speculation has eaten deep into the primary industries of the soil. Too often the producer is half farmer and half speculator; and that is not the kind of man who makes a successful breeder of stock. This question of maintaining a high standard of stock in the country is becoming of greater importance every year. With the disappearance of big estates consequent on the demand for closer settlement, the propagation of pure strains of high quality is steadily being narrowed down into very restricted limits. The dairying industry with us has sprung up and grown with amazing rapidity, and it is absurd to suppose that the few importations of high-class stock introduced up to now have sufficed to stamp our herds with the desired characteristics. Tu the balance-sheet of a South Island dairy factory recently submitted to us we found that the average quantity of butter-fat per cow in tho herds supplying the factory worked out at under 14!)lb per season. This means that each cow gave an average- return of £7 10s during the period of lactation. Now, allowing for interest on tho value of the land, labor, and upkeep of tho herds, £S per cow is a very fair annual sun; to : -:t d.i.cn on the debit side of each animal's ledger account. Thus the dairy farmers supplying this factory were really working for less than wages ; apart from their own efforts their business was being run at a loss equal to 10s per cow per annum. This may not be altogether a typical case, but it is certainly not an isolated one. As a matter of fact, taking the dairy herds of the Dominion as a whole, the average yield is from 1701b to 1801b of butter-fat per cow per annum ; and, taking expenses at £8 per cow per annum, this means an average annual profit of •£]. 10s per cow. By proper attention to breeding and by the adoption of the system of cow-testing to discover which animals should be weeded out as unprofitable, the yield could easily be increased to '_'Solb butter-fat, and at present prices that would mean a profit of L' 6 per cow instead of ,-Cl 10s. It can be done. It has been proved by individual farmers who have not been content to jog along in the old unscientific, uuprogressive, wasteful way. An absorbingly interesting and extremely instructive article in last month's Journal of the Department of Agriculture is supplied by Mr W. Burgess, of Taranaki, who describes how in six years he j increased the yield of butter-fat from his herds by 631b per cow—from 1981b in 190-3-06 to 2611b in 1011-12. Surely it would pay the dairy farmer to devote himself to briii^iiiil; about an improvement which has been proved attainable. There are 633.732 cows employed in tho i dairying industry, and if their average J annual yield of butter-fat were increased to 2801b each, those cows, at present prices, would return a ti'* profit of £3,802,392 per annum. Needless to say, the dairy farmers of New Zealand as a whole do not net anything like such a sum. annually. They are content with something like a quarter of that sum. Instead of groping about after pence by seeking to beat the buyers of his produce and get the highest possible price for it, ho /night bo securing pounds by a proper attention to his real business. A perverted commercial sense makes him turn to the wrong end of the whole matter. On the authority of an acknowledged expert, one-third of the cows in our dairy herds should be spayed as unprofitable and fattened off to be sold for beef. As yet, says our informant, cowtesting has not attracted much attention in Otago, and none in Southland. At Sterling a cow-testing association has already done much good work, and it is interesting to study some of the figures. Tvvo dairymen, on adjoining farms, had equally good land to work on. After allowing £8 per head for expenses, one of them netted £7 lis per cow this season, the other only £2 Is Bd. In other words, it is costing the first man 6id lb to produce his butterfat, while it is costing his neighbor IOH lb, and as they both receive Is per lb for the fat, it is easy to understand how much faster tho bank balance of the one would grow compared with that of the other. There would be, no such discrepancy if the necessity for paying attention to breeding were as universally recognised in regard to dairy cattle as it is, for instance, in regard to the draught horse. For many years our Clydesdale breeders have vied with one another in importing from Britain the best stock procurable, and now for JTifaiß J2j*st thex h&Y3JiejSfiL_esJ?orti«£

horses of great value to the Australian States. Otago and Southland stud masters could put in the show ring horses which would not be beaten anywhere in the world. Could the same bo said in regard to our Ayrshires, Jerseys, or Holsteins, either in regard to numbers or quality? There, have been hardly any importations, and our cattle have deteriorated in consequence. In the North Island farmers are beginning to realise the value of cow-testing, and already pedigree animals are being imported and valuable strains introduced, even by the small farmers, who have become alive to tho fact that capital so invested will yield most handsome returns —as we have already indicated.