DAIRYING IN DENMARK.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 119, 20 March 1895, Page 3

DAIRYING IN DENMARK.

| The following extract from Mrs i Alec Tweedio's work, ' A Winter Jaunt in Norway,' shows how ! thoroughly the dairy industry has j been developed in Denmark : We were anxious to havo a peep at a butter factoiy after hearing that England imported £11.965,284 worth of that commodity in 1892, one-third of which had come from Denmark. Such figures are enough to excite any English person's interest at a time when landlords, farmers, and labourers are all crying out that ruin is staring them in the face, and that nothing agricultural can bo worked at a profit. So thought Denmark twenty years ago, and poverty had settled 011 the land ; but one day she awoke from hev lethargy, and started producing butter, bacon, and eggs with such marvellous results that Denmark is a flourishing country to-day, giving employment to her people, and filling her coffers with English gold. llow has this come about ? The Danish farmers have seen tho advisability of co-operation, and have realised that it is impossible to keep one standard of butter when everyone makes tho article according to his own particular fancy. They started small butter factories hero and there, to which a few farmers sent their cream, and tho butter was made on tho most approved scientific principles. Little 1 by little tho work has spread, until factories are to bo met with all over the land, and tho big farmer and the little crofter alike send their cream to bo made into butter for tho English market. This system has been so wonderfully perfected that veterinary surgeons visit the farms once a fortnight, when every case of disease among the cattle is isolated. The animals are fed 011 rigorous diet, the milkers are properly trained, the milk is strained and cooled by ice immediately. The cream is separated by centrifugal machines. Means of transport are rapid and excellent, and once the cream reaches the factory the butter is made so methodically that one girl can do an 1 amount of work which it would require six to accomplish under other conditions. It is this combined labour, this wonderful system, built upon year by year, that has made butter-making in Denmark the success it.is, and not ' State aid,' as many erroneously suppose. The State holds shows and awards prizes, and does so on i uch an excellent system that it raises the standard of butter every year, but beyond that tho State has nothing to do with tho trade. Nothing is wasted in Denmark all tho butter-milk is used in feeding the pigs, and the bacon that is sent yearly to England amounts in value to considerably over £1,000,000 sterling. But little Denmark does not stop even here. Tho egg trade is worth over £-100,000 per annum. And it niay over a million eggs are sent every day to the English market from foreign sources. . Tho Danish egg trade is again the result of co-operation. The rich farmer with his hundreds of eggs per diem, and the little crofter with his half-dozen, merely keep them until tho arrival of tho district egg-collector. This person calls every week, and has them properly packed, and sends them off to England in thousands.