DOMINION DAIRYING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19274, 12 March 1926, Page 14

DOMINION DAIRYING.

USE OF MODERN METHODS. GROWTH OF THE INDUSTRY.THIRTY YEARS' PROGRESS. Considering that tpwn and country folk alike are largely dependent on the dairying industry, it is remarkable that city dwellers take only a very general interest in the production of butter and cheese. Few of those who heard a lecture hist evening by Mr. C. J. Parlane, assistant-manager of the New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Company, could have failed to be impressed with the rapid growth and wonderful present-day efficiency of dairying in New Zealand. The lecture was delivered under the auspices of the Workers' Educational Association. In a short hour and a-half Mr. Parlane reviewed the whole industry from the cow im her meadow to the railway truck receiving its load of butter in boxes. He also traced it from tho days when freezing plants and cream separators were unknown, to the present, when every up-to-date cowshed is supplied with electric light and electrically-heated water. To show the hard conditions under which o'fd-time settlers laboured, Mr. Parlane mantioned that before refrigeration made lajrge-scale export possible many of them carried their butter six or eight .miles over bush tracks to the storekeeper, ajid were glad to receive for it 3d or 4d a pound, or the equivalent in goods. However,, even under those conditions there was some export. Storekeepers "milled" the butter, salted it heavily, and packed it in barrels for shipment. The co-opera-tive movement began in the Cardiff district of Taranaki, in the eighties, when a few farmers established a small milling plant and exported butter for three years before they changed over to cheese, which was being jila.de still by the organisation which they had founded. Mr. ParlatiVJ also recalled that one of the earliest and most efficient butterfactories in had been set up in 1887 by a highly-respected Chinese settler, Mr. Chew Chong. The motive power was a wa^ex*-wheel. He explained how refrigeration had not only made sea transport practiealllo, but also had enabled the product to be greatly improved by the control of temperatures. The lecturer showe d a series of 90 lantern slides, depicting dairy herds, farming methods, the exteriors and interiors of butter, cheese, dri.s d milk, and casein factories. He described the process of manufacture, and showed how modern machinery, strict testing> and the application of science are makvng New Zealand dairy produce equal to ar\y in the "world. Some of the slides .illustrated developments peculiar to the Zealand Cooperative Dairy Company,, such as its box factory, which turns but a million containers a year, its lab(sra|ory, and the coalmine at Glen Afton. Mr. Parlane received a heary vote of thanks for his address.