DAIRY INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20668, 13 September 1930, Page 20

DAIRY INDUSTRY.

PROFITABLE PRODUCTION.

AVERAGE LIFE OF THE COW.

An American authority has como to the conclusion that dairy cows are dry " too mnch of tho time." Ho says that a tabulation of more than 10,000 yearly individual cow records from dairy herd improvement associations showed that on an average those cows remained in the herd 4.7 years from the time they reached production &%o. Similar studies of records by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of tho United Estates Department of Agriculture, and by C. W. Larson,, gave 4.43 and 4.85 years respectively. Figures from these and other sources indicate that on an average dairy cows remain in the herd less than flvo years from the time they reach production ago. If that is true, the average dairy cow has already lived about onethird of her life before she directly pays a singlo dollar for her stable room and board. In other words, she lives two and a-half years, out of seven and a-half before she produces any milk. Ir, during her five productive yoars, she is dry three months in overy twelve, sho is dry ono and a-quarter years of the five. Two and one-half years plu3 ono and a-quarter years equals three and three-quarter years of non-production, exactly one-half of tho entire lifetime of tho cow.

If our dairy cows freshened once a year on an average, which at present they do not, and if each wero a consistent high producer, their productive lifetime in the herd might bo ten years instead of fivo, and their income ovor cost of feed during all tho years would be several times-what it is now.

A iow-producing dairy cow, if she yields a profit at all, may not yiold one until she is six or seven years old, and sho may cease to be profitable while still comparatively young. A high-producing dairy cow begins to yiold a profit at the ago of two or three years. When sho is six or seven years of age her profits are very high, and she may continuo to yield a profit until very late in life.

The lifetime records of a low-producing cow may bo likened to tho daily course of the winter's sun, which rises late, remains low, lasts only a little while, then disappears. The lifetime record of a highproducing cow may bo likened to tho daily course of the summer's sun, which rises early, climbs to a great height, remains long, descends slowly, and seems reluctant to disappear.