RAPID MILKING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20152, 12 January 1929, Page 17

RAPID MILKING.

AN IMPORTANT FACTOR. Milking, according to Mr. James MacKintosh, of the National Institute of Research in Dairying (Britain), should be carried out. as quickly, quietly and thorfoughly as possible. Quickness in milking results not only in a saving of time, but slso in an increased return. The increase might be as much as ten per cent, in yield and up to forty per ceot. in butterfat.

1 hese contentions were nude, before an English agricultural discussion society by Mr. MacKintosh recently. He further ft-ited that. n<-> good milker should bo cont°nt with less than nine cows per hour, flhe time required to milk any ono tow, he said, would vary with the yield and the ease with which the cow could be milked. Cows giving a large, yield might be milked at. the rate of three to four pounds per minute, liuf. th« average, sate nf milking was probably about, half hat quantity.

Thorough . milking meant very careful

Gripping out. This was most important, because, (he strippings were very rich in fat. Tests which had been made showed ihat in milk from a completed milking which averaged four per cent, of fat the percentage in tho stripping amounted to from to ten per cent. Insufficient F'ripping, therefore, meant a loss of tho richest portion of the milk, and ji reduced output of butter or cheese, and it also tended to the drying off of cows. Various methods of massaging the quarters of the udder had been recommended from time r.o time as a means of securing the maximum yield, but the time required for that was only well spent when the cows had been badly milked in the. ordinary way. Heifers should always be gently and patiently treated, and carefully milked throughout tho first milking period.

Ihere was much difference of opinion on wet vers lis dry milking. The adveragfs of wet milking were that the skin pf the teat was made flexible and responded mom readily to the pressure of the fingers, and that a lubricant was provided to facilitate the movement of the milker's fingers. But the method of wet milking adopted by many milkers, namely, itliat of moistening tho hands with milk, and then grasping the teat, which might tr might not have been cleaned previously, had only to bo seen to be condemned as a dirty habit' I If the teats were cleaned before milking fcnd the milkers washed their hands frequently, both teats and hands were made Sufficiently pliable.