BUTTER-FAT COMPETITIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15170, 9 December 1912, Page 4

BUTTER-FAT COMPETITIONS.

ADVANTAGES OF COW TESTING.

At both the'Egmont and Stratford dairying competitions, car. ied out under the auspices of the local Agricultural and. Pastoral Associations, prizes were offered for the cow with tho best record from a butterfat point of view, and for the best on a combined fat and casein test. It has been repeatedly urged that for cheese-making the best butter-fat cow ne>jd not be the besb cow, for the casein content must also bo taken into consideration. It is worth whilo to note that at both Hawera and Stratford the cow which won the butterfat test also won the combined test, proving herself the best cow for either butter or cheese making, that is 2 as far as this particular short-period test is concerned. In fact, at Hawera the same three cows occupied the three first places in both competitions, whilst at Stratford the third cow in tho butter-fat test was a close fourth in the combined test. The winner was a Jersey cow, nearly a pure-bred. Her figures were "for four days' milking: 197£1b milk, 5.6 test. 11.061b fat; casein, 6.711b. Mr. N. Fulton, dairy inspector in Taranaki, speaking on this subject, said that whereas a win in a competition of this sort over a _ short period of testing was meritorious, it did not prove the winning cow to be the best cow over a whole milking season. But it should stimulate the interest of the owners of tho prize cows in the production of but-ter-fat, and should encourage them to submit their cows to a longer test. . There was no need, he said, for dairymen to go to the State farms to see top-notch cows, although there were top-notch cows there. There "were plenty of top-notch cows, he said, on the average Taranaki dairy farm, but as yet they had not been individualised. One great trouble in tho past had been that farmers would not bother to ascertain which was the best-producing cow in tho herd. But the means of finding the best cow wero now available, and should be taken full advantage of. Having ascertained his best cows, the farmer should procure a pure-bred bull of good milking strain to mate with them, and then we Would bo on the right lines for the building up of a good daily herd of high producers. "' It is worth while to note," continued Mr. Fulton, " tho marvellous way in which good cows respond to tho good feed in tho "paddocks used in these buttercompetitions ,at shows, and this should stimulate fanners to "spoon-feed" their cows a bit. Of course, some cows will never be earners, even under the best conditions, but testing will result in the;;o being culled out. Then the farmers will havif moiv. milk, more fat, and more money for less labour. The farmers will have the experience, so common at these competitions, of having to get a second bucket to hold the milk given at each meal. Reverting to the figures in the official record of the test. Mr. Fulton pointed out that tho winning cow had given 2631b of milk, of a 4 test'," containing 10.521b of fat', in the four days. For a 30-days' period she should give 781b of fat, which at Is per lb, would be worth £3 18s. The second prize cow gave only 1791b of milk in the four days, but she had a 5.6 test, so that her yield of fat was almost as good as the winner's, or 751b in 30 days. This comparison was useful in showing that farmers should not confine themselves to producing big quantities of milk, for the cow giving only about three-fourths of the milk yield of the winner gave almost as big a fat return; nor should they go right out for hightesters, for the winner here tested only 4. Mr. Fulton advocated the regular testing of all dairy cows throughtout the milking season as "being absolutely necessary, in order to enable a farmer to sort out the good from the bad. . .......