THE FARM.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume V, Issue 521, 12 July 1897, Page 4

THE FARM.

Our Dairy Cows. Thus writes “ Winnower” in the Ilawera Star: — A dairy man on a small scale was speaking to me the other day, and instanced how difficult it was in this district to buy anything like cows that will prove profitable, and instanced that three he bought last year were haidiy worth tl ,# *ir grass. This, he alleges, is a sore point with buyers who pick up a cow or two at i weekly sales, as it is a common practice to sell oft* the cows that milk suppliers find do not return a sufficient profit, allowing someone else to find out, after they have f.d the beasts for a few months, that they have made a bad bargain, and so these owners, as a matter of course, return the had bargains to the salevards to be resold as dairy cows, and so the thing gees on until there is condition enough on .the ancient milk producer to merit* her meeting her doom at the hands of the slaughterman. In the meantime, however, the cows are fast increasing in that all essential quality of milk produc- , ing. By systematic culling on the i part of the dairyman, and upon no consideration selling the heifer calves I from the good cows, there has been j vast improvement in the herds. Some may say that dairymen do not study the breed enough, and go in too much for Shorthorns; there certainly is not much effort made in the matter of experimenting with the different breeds with a view to | finding out which breed of cows are the most profitable to the dairyman. ! But it must be borne in mind that dairymen are making the most use j of the Shorthorns and only keeping J the best milkers. After all the question of cows being of individual 1 or distinct breed is not so much, j The main question is, are your i tows typical of their breed ? If this ' be so, and they have been tried and not found warning, it dtisu’t so much matter whether the tows he Jers ys, Alderneys, Shorthorns, Hereford:?, or any other breed. Coining back to the first point, that of buying cast-oils in the yards, that is merely a matter of business. The same thing is practised everyday in every kind of stock taken to market, and if any seller were conscientious enough to give the faults and failings of his stock we would be living ilia very honest age. From what I have noticed 1 do not see so much of what l have been informed is going on. When a cow is found to be a poor milker she is generally a good “doer,” thus she is more pmii able to sell a? heel' than on her j shady reputation of being a good ' milker.