THE DAIRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 849, 8 June 1888, Page 18

THE DAIRY.

THE BUTTER YIELD PER COW.

We have often talked with our buttermaking readers on the subject of culling the dairy herd and perpetuating the fittest. We believe this is one of the most important things to attend to on a dairy ranch. And. not u few of our dairymen are giving their best thought to it. The surest way to pro ceed in culling a herd is no doubt that practiced by a dairyman in an Eastern State, who recently gave his method and its- resuits to a convention of butter-makers. He said he bad been dairying with forty cows for twenty years, and his cows had averaged 150 pounds of butter per year, and with that he was satisfied. His returns were about 3750d0l per year from each cow. One day he read in the New York Tribune the experience of a man who tested his cows separately, and was greatly surprised at the difference he discovered in the amount of butter produce derived. He was so much impressed with the figures given that he resolved to take the trouble to test his own herd. Accordingly he arranged to keep the milk of each cow separate, and churn the product of each by itself, until he could determine the exact results, ana see whether it would be best to (segregate the cows and coafine himself in future to the offspring of the best. The result of his experiment was astonishing from the first. He found the milk product of his herd varied all the way from eighteen to forty pounds per cow. But thiß was not all. Some of tho lightest milkers produced the

most butter. He then commenced raising only the heifers of. the best butter producers for bis own use, and selling off all the others. And iu a short time he found he had increased the average yield of his herd from 150 to 266 p unds a year per cow—an increase of 116 pounds per cow each year, or a money produce of 62d0l 50c instead of 37d0l 50c. And the improved-herd ate no more, and took no more care than the old one. There are many dairies in Marin County on which equally startling improvements could be made by culling the herd. Some of our dairymen are already alive to the importance of this point, but by.no means all. Many cows are Kept in the herd and milked year after year, which are good for nothing but beef. Others are lorge milkers, valuable for a city milkman, but not worth their feed ou the ranch as butter producers, An expert cm almost unerringly pick out the best cows for butter by their marks and appearance, but the surer way is to test their produce, and insist on the Darwinian law, the survival fit. test. San Rafael Journal.