TEST AND CHEESE

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 2 May 1925, Page 4

TEST AND CHEESE

JERSEY V. FRIESIAN. . MR WRIGHT ENTERS THE LI^TS, ADVOCATE OF LOW TESTS. Writing under the heading ‘ ‘ Eyeopeners in the Cheese Line,” and taking as his slogan: “The higher the fat the lower the yield, ’ ’ Mr ■ W. R. Wright, of Rahotu and Matangi, here enters the dairy production controversy. Breeders of both Jerseys and Friesians —acknowledged champions of the hightesters and the high milk-yieldexs respectively—will follow his letter with interest. ' '

(To the Editor.) Sir, —On milk yields your readers should pass a stiff exam., but as Mr. O’Dea has indicated a desire on the v part of non-primary producers to know more of the facts, and some points having escaped notice, my reason for butting in, with your kind permission, becomes apparent. The losses to factories anid owners of low-testing cows are deadly when we deal with milk testing in the vicinity of 6.0, as such milk produces only 1.9 lb cheese to each lib of fat. Therefore, . with cheese selling at 100 s, or its parity here —9d:—this rich milk returns Is 3d per lib butter-fat against the 3.73 testing. cow’s return ofi Is S.jd in the spring months. Twenty-five pounds of milk is a fair average daily output for a 6.0 tester, and at 9d this is worth 2s lid, while the common garden variety of cow testing 3.73, by giving 33lbs milk, returns the game ' money, 2s l)d. It is the decreaising-solids-as-the-fat-rises trick that is making people who did not know gasp, ana when it is boiled down only B'libs milk divides the high and low testers (25 ro 33), and after that the low tester walks away from the 6.0 animal. People will ask: AVh.at about the fat in the whey? That is just the worst • of it. So much of it doesn’t get there, but remains in the cheese unpaid for. And when it goes Home such cheese is so crumbly, wasteful and unsightly, with the fat oozing out of it, that, attest ■Seeing it and finding such stuff was unwanted, the Control. Board is going for standardisation, and already Mr. Motion, lias experiments in cheese with lower fat content going on in one of the many factories he directs. Now ’ skimming aown (‘Hawera people know all about that), making a hard dry cheese which cannot be .sold as “Full Gream” is, impossible, and this rich milk—all over' 4.0, or perhaps 3.8 —must go into butter, new selling at a discount of" 3d under cheese and! muc-li more likely to go lower through over-supply from all quarters, while Argentine's cheese has fallen from 6600 tons to 1100 in iwo years.

Mr. A. F. Neilson, the well-known factory manager a.t Pihama, says : “What we want- for ideal cheesemaking is a milk, with a normal fat content and a high casein content, and the man who can breed this sort, of cow will solve the problem.” In dealing with this, I turned up records, and made a most astonishing discovery, thus: . . Mafia . ( Jersey), - the highest semiofficial return tins' season, gave 1511 lbs milk; llOlbjs 'butter-fat ; test 7.L; yielding 1.61bs cheese to lib butterfat, and, if turned into cheese according to tables, making 182 lbs cheese at 9d, equals £6 16s 6c!. Alooavale Queen Bess (Taranaki Friesian) gave 3101.1 b s milk; 113.31bs fat; test 3.6; which, yielding at the 2.75 rate, gives 3421 bs cheese ju-t 9d equal® £ll 14s 3d. ' .1; ~v. Had the milk of these two eqws been Gent to tho same factory,' ffdalia ,s owner would have collected for one month £8 ss; being 110 x 18d. while M.Q. Bess’,s owner would, only have got 5s more (113.8 x 18d), although the latter cow produced one hundred and thirty pounds .more cheese, in one month. '

Business men would not put up with this for .24 'hours. We fool farmers have stood still over it for 24, years, but the slogan, “The higher the fatthe lower- the,-yield,” will hurst the high tester bubble now that .standardisation is in sight.—l am, etc., W. R, WRIGHT. Riahotu and Mat-angi.