"COW VALUE"

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17130, 4 September 1926, Page 11

"COW VALUE"

HOW TO DETERMINE IT SYSTEM IN DAIRY FARMING While the influence of the land value on the prosperity of the individual farmer is readily appreciated, the vital question of the. "cow value," which is to be of much more vital importance, has not. received due consideration. Thir individual cow is rarely considered as the basis of our industry's great wealth. Too many dairymen rely solely on the size of their milk cheques, or the number of cows they are milking, instead of working their'business on a scientific and businesslike basis by assessing the profits made above the. cost of production, (luess-work is what makes expenses high and' absorbs the profits of many a dairy fanner's business. Thousands of farmers are struggling under extraordinary needless burdens, which are chiefly represented in leakages, yet no effort' is being made to find out why, when and where these leakages occur. Pecau.se it takes a. little time to keep an exact record of what each cow does, or to estimate results, the dairy farmer usually keeps no record! at all, ' It is a lamentable fact that numbers of men engaged in dairying have given it up because it did not pay. This is not'the general experience, but men hive taken up land, and, working on obsolete methods, have been doomed to failure at the start. A lot of the failures could have been prevented if a rational system of determining profits from individual cows had been instituted. THE ONLY REMEDY. The only remedy for farmers to adopt is to rear the heifers by a. good hull from cows that have proved productive. This is the only practical and certain way of getting'a good herd) together; then why is it that numbers of NewZealand 'farmers fail to take full advantage of the facilities provided lor increasing their profits? The question of profits is always of great interest to dairy farmers generally, but the question of increased profits brought about by the lessening of the cost of production or the stoppage of leakages has not received' the attention from farmers which its importance demands. It seems that nothing short of impending disaster will convince some dairy farmers (hat haphazard methods must only end in failure. There are two ways of increasing profits : Raising the. price of the marketable product, or d'ecreasing the cost of production. The first alternative is, it would seem, largely in the lap of llio gods, and we must therefore turn to the question of reducing the cost- of production. How can this best be done? Firstly, by adopting a system of forage crops for increasing the amount of the food supply, and, secondly, by eliminating the unprofitable cow. In order to form a bnsfs to work from we must estimate the value of the labor expended in the case of, and the amount of food consumed by, the average dairy cow under existing conditions. No matter wh it the cost of production may actually he. the relative value of each cow's earning power remains practically the same. What dairy farmers have to consider is that : No comparisons can he made between the respective merit?! of individual cows until a certain amount has been set aside to cover the cost of production. This fact has not nlwavs been recognised, and has led to erroneous conclusions being formed. INTERESTINO FIGURES. To illustrate this point : Taking £7 10s as the cost of production, each cow has to produce 1501 b of hutterfat before she commences to make any profit for her owner. Up to the 1501 b mark all cows are equal; every pound.above that mark is profit, and every pound under loss. No. 1 cow. giving 1511 bof huttcfat, eirns a small profit of Is; No. 2 cow. givino- 1591 b. earns 2s profit- on the same basis. The gencrd answer to the question, " How much better is No. 2 rw than No. 1?" is usually "one shilling." She is certainly one sli'llim: better, hut she is more than that—she is a IfO ner cent better cow, because her •"■"fit is twice as much as that from No. 1. In other words, it would tike two cows producing 151.1 b each to make as much profit as one cow giving 1521 b would ret em. If dairy farmers will only irrasp. this simple fact they will "•o'.'klv nut an end to the existing conditions of f bines, but we ran go further with mv illustration to show the wonderful benefits a farmer derives ''nun a t»"wled"e of the merits of his individual cows. A third cow. producing 3Colb of 1 -,ti,...f.,t. is cviin" a profit of £7 lis. ~. ir/vj rPV ~p |)t ]lim . ( , p ro flt than cow v o. 1. She is nvodncing not only twice •s much Inlterfat as No. 1, hut she is iv-duriii" as much nrofit. as 151 cows ' : <-'ig 1511 bof butterfat each would cam.