Winter Milking

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 92, 9 July 1927, Page 26

Winter Milking

Not Worth While Offers No Inducement RECENTLY several Bay of Plenty dairymen got together and discussed the question of winter dairying. With the mild winters experienced in this country and the higher prices which generally ruled for butter-fat during the winter months it was considered that New Zealanders could profitably emulate the example of farmers in some other lands, and milk throughout the winter. It was decided to further investigate the question.

TTUNDREDS of men are engaged in winter milking in New Zealand to-day. and almost without exception they curse their lot. Hundreds of women and children tied to the drudgery of the cowshed long for the day when father will set them free. No one can blame them. Working long hours in the mud and slush of winter, finishing milking every morning before daylight, they receive a miserable pittance compared with the worker of the cities. Yet, that is why the city dweller is able to obtain cheap milk delivered at his home in time for breakfast. Same for Factory Suppliers Such conditions would prevail on the farms supplying the factories if winter milking became general. Milking, even in the summer, is a bad enough tie, bordering on drudgery and

slavery in many cases, and to deprive the worker, owner or otherwise, of his only opportunity of recuperating in the winter would not make for either economy or profit. Other factors also have to be considered.

Even in Denmark, where the cattle are hand-fed and housed during the winter, it is doubtful whether winter milking pays when compared with concentrating on the summer season. In New Zealand it has been proved conclusively that a vendor milking, say, for Is 6d a gallon in the winter, makes less profit than a man getting Is 2d a gallon in the summer. As the greatest extra butterfat payment a man can expect in the winter months is from 2d to 3d a lb, it can be seen he would not even have the inducement offered the milk supplier. Again, it must be remembered that it is only during the one or two months of the year, when cream production is at its lowest ebb, that the factories are enabled to offer any increase as compared with the summer parity. Thus, if the practice of winter milking became general, it is only reasonable to assume that winter payments would be

reduced on a par with those rulin, during others months of the year, tv present extra payments are more or lj a form of sympathetic or policy Oot * and are not regulated so much bv Home market. Time For Other Work The farmer’s year is J kenerali* divided into two main sections— the milking season, when the cowshed quires practically undivided attention and the off-season during two or thS months in winter, when there is \\tZ milking to be done and. apart flij seeing to the feeding of the herd rK settler can attend to other needsT! his farm, or can even get away f nr • lew days. The winter is, in factTh* time for catehing up on the wnr® neglected during the season, and the time for preparing for the coming

season. Introduce winter milking, and the farmer would, to a more or less extent, be always behind, and the monotony of the routine would ensure the practice cutting its own throat within two or three seasons.

Even with the best of supplementary fodder and care it is a moot point as to whether paddock-fed cows can be induced to produce to their late spring and early summer capacity during the winter months. Like every other animal they require the sun, and the cold and wet of winter cannot be compensated for even by the best of attention. It is in trying to provide this compensation that experience has proved the dairyman drops his profit. New Zealand certainly has a mild climate when compared with Canada and the European butter and cheese producing countries, but everythin!; points to the assumption that the present milking season is the only worthwhile ftne, both for profit and convenience. The farmer seeking extra profits cannot do better than concentrate on testing, breeding, culling and feeding. These essentials are proved profit-getters. R.C.