PROFITABLE STOCK.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 137, 15 November 1895, Page 3

PROFITABLE STOCK.

When milk is selling at 2d a gallon and some of the factories are paying a lower price this season, it is perfectly evident (writes “ Brum ”in the Australasian) it is only those cows which yield a larger quantity of milk that can pay their way. Dairying is said to be a very profitable business, but as a matter of fact it is quite the reverse, except where the cows are well selected and tested, and nothing but really good animals maintained or admitted into the milking yard. At the lowest computation, no cow can possibly leave her owner a profit unless she yields 400 gal. of milk per annum, which at the present average price of milk is equal to £3 7s Bd. Any cow that does not bring in this return is not worth milking at all; it is sheer waste of time and grass to keep her on the place. Yet how many dairy herds are there in the colony whose average yield amounts to 400 gal, I believe I could count them all on the fingers of one hand. In nearly every herd there are, however, a few choice animals that yield a great deal more, but, on the other hand, what a terrible army fall below the standard at the milkspail. It is those lean or unprofitable kind that eat up all the profits of the good cattle; they should be weeded out and disposed of without delay. To make ends meet dairymen must clearly see that it is to their interest to test their cows most carefully. At the present price of milk they cannot afford to work on blindly and in the dark as to what each member of their herd is earning. Still this is whet the majority of farmers are doing; they do not know which of their cows are paying their way and which are not. It takes a first-class cow nowadays to yield sufficient to pay for her board and lodging, so that every time I see a man milking ope of the scrub order—much to his own loss poor man—-I conclude he has not yet adopted the plan of testing his cows. The foregoing remarks lead me on to speak in the same strain regarding the other animals of the farm. The fact that so many worthless cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, or poultry are to be found on nearly avepy farm never strikes the owner until he comes to sell them, when ho discovers that ho has been growing only rubbish.