THE DAIRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1248, 30 January 1896, Page 6

THE DAIRY.

FEED AND RETURNS. Professor Sheldon reviews a work on dairying by Professor Wolff, a Gel-man author, and says :—The first consideration is the cow, for, as our author says, "The age of the animal and the duration of the period of lactation often have a greater influence on the amount of milk produced than the method of feeding." And, again, " P.adly developed glands can never produce large quantities of milk, even with the most nutritious food. It is very evident that for the successful production of milk, cows of suitable breed and of individual merits aie the first essential." wo find a most important fact in farm economy, viz., that breed has a greater influence than food on the quantity and quality of the milk which a cow shall yield, assuming that all the food she needs is there for her to eat or reject as she chooses. To impress this upon dairy farmers'is very desirable, because far too many of them seem to attach no great importance to the question of heredity in tho lactation of cows. That a cow whose natural capacity for yielding milk is great will readily respond to improved food is just as true as that sound and retentive land will readily respond to good farming, and there is about as much difference in land for this as there is in cows for that. The biggest eaters in a herd of cows are not by any means necessarily the best milkers, and there are " hungry soils" which make a poor return for the manures that are laid upon them. Many cows, indeed, make a poor show for the food they eat, either in milk or nVsJj • others put on flesh instead of putting out milk, and yet others yield a large qtiantity'of good milk. These last are the most profitable to a dairy farmer, all things considered. And, again, the smaller breeds of cows, and the smaller cows of large breeds, are generally the best milkeis, weight of milk for weight of carcase. Take, for instance, the Jerseys, the Ayrshires, and the Kerries, the smaller of our dairy breeds, and we have the milkers of all, weight of cow considered. So far as milk alone is concerned, it is open to question whether we do wisely in maintaining the large breeds at all. But milk is not everything, and we must not take it alone into consideration. The best cows are they which breed well, milk well, and fatten well at last, and in this triple capacity it is hard to beat the milky tribes of Shorthorns. But in the Shorthorn breed, as a whole, we find a great disparity in reference to lactation, for there are good, bad, and indifferent milkers in it, the last sort, perhaps, predominating. There is no breed in which\all the cows are equally excellent milkers, bub the disparity is

large breeds. Each cow, indeed, has her own " individual merits" as a milker, and those whose merits are the highest in this respect respond the moat readily and generously to food of good quality. This, alter all, is so plain a fact that all observant farmers are well aware of it, but We may well doubt if all of those who know it-attach to it the measure of importance which it so well deserves.

Modern investigations, in which Wolff has taken a prominent position, have demonstrated the expediency and desirability of giving to dairy cows a ration of food that is well b danced in its constituents well balanced, that is to say, in its albuminoids on the one hand, and in its fats and carbohydrates on the other —well balanced in reference to what the food supplies and what the cows require tor a copious yield of milk, without waste of food-consti-tuents. The book befoie me, now, throws upon these principles a flood of light that is greater and clearer than 1 have found elsewhere. Contrary to the ideas of a generation ago, the author tells us that " before everything else, a liberal supply of albumen" —in the food a cow eats duction of milk, because it induces a continued and rapid building of gland cells, which latter are principally built up and charged from albumen." Elsewhere he says :—" Milk is not a simple secretion, and is not separated from the blood in the same sort of way as the urine filters through the kidneys, but is first formed in the milk glands, and is principally the result of the breaking up of the gland cells, and is in reality a liquefied organ." And, again : —"Milk is an organ that has been liquefied by fatty degeneration. The original cells from which the milk has been produced are composed of albumen, which is changed into the constituents of the milk as soon as the cellscominer.ee activity. If milk were a transudation product of the blood, it could not possibly serve as a perfect and complete food, as it would obviously lack some of the materials necessary for the growth of cells." And, further: " The milk-glands possess a very independent existence. They absorb material from the blood-capillaries and lymphatics, and by the disruption of the epithelial cells which line the interior of the milk-glands milk is produced."