PRODUCTION ON DAIRY FARMS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 29 September 1928, Page 16

PRODUCTION ON DAIRY FARMS

INTERESTING DETAILS. In the course of an instructive lecture on Farm Economics, Mr Fawcett, of the Department of Agriculture, gave striking statistics showing 'the development in dairying returns. later alia he said that from the year 1901-02 to 1926-27 there had ibeen an increase in the grassland of 11.7 per cent., whereas the volume pf products —lamb, mutton, wool, butter-fat, beef and calf—showed an increase of 136.7 per cenc. The conclusion, therefore, was that methods of farm management had improved and also that stock had been improved. The production per acre of all grassland (sown native and tussock grasses) had increased by 169.9 percent., and the'total sheep units of stociv, l.fe., all cattle converted to sheep units on the basis of one cattle beast to six sheep, showed an increase of 69.7 per cent., the sheep units of stock carried per acre on all grassland bad increased by 51.8 per cnn 1 :., and production of lamb, mutton, wool blitter-fat, and eailf per. sheep unit of stock by 37.2 per cent. Therefore during the period quoted there bad been increases in every direction. The major increase had undoubtedly been from the dairy farm. The more one studied the position the more one realised that during the. last decade in particular the increased prosperity of, New Zealand had been due to a large extent to the development of our .dairy industry and one was brought to the conclusion that any further increase in prosperity would be brought about;very largely by an increase in that industry whether by enlargement of the area of land being used or by improvement on the area

already devoted to dairying. That being so it was desirable that they bliouid otudy 'tile dairy farm industry from every aspect, so that in future they would get the most possible out ot it. During the past 12 or 18 months he had devoted most-of his time to the. study of dairy farm management ana the tmaneial position arising thbrefrom. He had 'been supplied by the dairy farmers' with certain details affecting some 200 farms in ’the Waikato and Taranaki districts, add from this inf or matioii had arrived at certain eonelusions which he believed would he ol value generally, individually the information was not of great value, but when they studied the details affecting a large number of farms then useful deductions could be made. Next year he hoped to visit Taranaki and ‘to be able to collect data from,, many more farms. in considering production from the dairy farm he held that the main object should be to produce as much per acre as possible, ant} at the same time try to kedp down as low as possible maintenance and overhead expenses. In the past, and it still lidppeiied, he thought, many farmers had endeavoured to prodiice more per cow and had somewhat lost sight of ,the fact that it was the per acre production which counted. The average butter-fat per acre ranged from 161.901b' on farms of an average area of 78 acres down to 38.081 b of •butter-fat per acre on farms of an average area of 187 acres, while the butterfat average per cow varied from 302.71 b to 192.31 b, and the carrying capacity on a 100-acre basis from 53.5 down to 19.8. It was proved ‘that on farms - producing a high amount of butter-fat.per acre they had a high carrying capacity and also a high production tier cow. These two features seemed to run hand in hand. When they increased their carrying capacity they naturally supplied adequate feed, and ‘that responded in giving high butter-fat production per acre. However, it was not always so, and it was interesting in studying the farms individually to> see that many instances occurred where farmers had high production per acre from cows which were not high in production per animal. On the other hand there were a number of farms where they had extremely high butter-fat per cow, but not such' a high, production per acre. One would suggest from this that, where they had enough feed on the farm, it would not be sound to get rid of the tail end unless they were positively able to' replace them with cows of a higher producing capacity. The figures indicated that this was being done.

It mine back to the question tliait pasture management was the root of the whole question and a most important point in this connection was bopdr esing.