MILKING TESTS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 12025, 11 December 1901, Page 4

MILKING TESTS.

A NEW SCHEME. At the meeting of the committee of the Manawatn Agricultural and Pastoral Association on Saturday, Mr J. T. Lang, dairy export, who judged the milking tests at the late show, outlined a scheme for tho more successful carrying out of the competition in the future. After pointing out that tho conditions under which the tost was now carried was not productive of the best results, Mr Lang remarked that tho trial should also include the inspection of dairy herds, and he thought the society would be doing right in helping it along by encouraging a proper inspection of cow sheds and yards. He suggested that a competition be held by the association assisted by tho dairy companies in the Manawatn and surrounding districts, the competition to be carried out entirely by the association, and that tona tide suppliers to creameries and factories be invited to compete against oaoh other. Tho competition would take in the inspection of sheds and of cows, the conditions in which the milk was kept aver night, and the results that were obtained at tho factories. The tests at the factory would be reckoned over a period of two or three months. The scheme could easily be carried out by the association, the only difficulty which the speaker thought would check them being that of checking the number of cows entered by each individual, bat this could bo managed by tho appointment of an inspector to enter the yards and check tho animals milked. A competition was carried out at Carterton on similar lines, and he (the speaker) had advised Otago to do the same. He would recommend that £IOO be got together and be awarded in a specified number of prizes, and that eaoh district be asked to contribute pro rala, and the co-operation of dairy companies would be necessary. It would be an incentive for dairymen to go in for better results in every way, as at present the great bug-bear the factories bad to contend with waa that of getting good sound milk served to them. They had been fighting for inspection of dairies in some way or another for years past, and Mr Lang thought that it tho assooiation would formulate some scheme as that which he had just proposed, the department would be only too glad to help them. On behalf of his own firm ho would offer to contribute £3O towards a prize list, if other companies would also give pro rata. It would be very cheap money to tho various dairy factories if they did so contribute. For the first year or to it might not prove very successful, but afterwards it would work wonders. Mr Ling added that bulls would be taken into consideration with tho herds, and also the calves and pigs, and eventually 1 tho whole farm when the scheme matured. That was what tho Otago Society had carried out for a number of years very successfully. As far as the i milking of cows on the show ground was concerned, it was simply useless.