THE DAIRY INDUSTRY IN SIBERIA

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1679, 4 May 1904, Page 66

THE DAIRY INDUSTRY IN SIBERIA

Some very interesting items about the dairy industry in Siberia! may i e culled from a report prepared! by Mr H. Oooke, who has carried out a commercial mission to Siberia on behalf of the Advisory Committee oij Commercial Intelligence of the Board of Trade. From this authority we learn that the first person to engage in butter-making by modern methods in Western Siberia was an Englishwoman, married to a Russian, whose dairy farm at Chernaia Reitchka (in 1886 the only one in Sihead a), in the district of Tinmen, is still a well-known model of its kind. In 1893, a Rushan opened, near Kourgan, the first dairy producing butter for export abroad. The progress made since ha® been extraordinarily rapid', so that it is now the main industry of the. country, from the point of view of international trade. It is the chief resource

of the peasants, who, but for the income thus derived, would depend solely on the fluctuations of the harvest, and during the last three years the harvest has been disastrous. Tne Siberian cow, we are told by Mr Cooke, yields little milk, being too busy looking for food, but the quality is notable for richness, and it is just this inherent fatty quality which enables the butter, notwithstanding the conditions under which it is made, to bear the long suummer journey to Western markets. About 19 pounds of milk in winter and 22 in summer, are sufficient to make one pound of butter, while in Denmark some 28 pounds are needed. Bad harvests during the past three years have impelled the peasants to kill off some of their stock from want of sufficient fodder in the winter, but, despite this drawback, the development of the butter industry lias caused a wonderful increase in the number of milch cows.

The Siberian season for the export of butter is chiefly from May t-o> August-, and the transport service lias been greatly improved by specially constructed- railway trucks. These trucks, which are white, and now number about a thousand), are refrigerated with natural ioe regularly supplied at fixed stations en route. The butter is packed in .cleanlooking new beeohwood casks, made locally from imported German or Danish staves. These casks are themselves wrapped round with matting. The empty cask, after being smeared with salt, is lined) -internally with wet parchment-, the butter then being mashed tight in, and coated with salt at the top. The average weight of the filled cask is -about 1221 b. The butter is conveyed by -steamships from Windau to London and to Newcastle (via Copenhagen); from Riga to London, to Hull, and to Leith; and from St. Petersburg (Reval) to London, in each case once a week.