FARM AND DAIRY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 228, 9 January 1911, Page 3

FARM AND DAIRY

AU'jaANirS i.EAD.

I Ancldanders are nothing if not i»t>ti-

r:i-..!c. dn-i. lisi-i! tn what a writer in tlic local iklaid lias to say on its dairyiiijr prospects:--Auckland is rapidly becoming the leading dairying [irovim-o in New Zealand. Last year it hj; ailed all tin? province- in

its butter exports. At the present ti;ne it possesses nearly 4IM)I)I> more dairy cows than the niagniiiccnt dairying province of Tariinuki. In the )i)l)S-l) season, the latest date we have for stock statistics, New Zealand, for one reason and another, showed a decrease of S74(i dairy cows, whil-t Auckland, for the same period, showed an increase of SI4S. Auckland has. according to the same statistics, 241):) more dairy cows than are to lie found in the whole of the South Island.

it seems only a few years ago when it was commonly believed that Auckland was utterly unsuited for dairying, and yet to-day there is scarcely a portion oi the province where the butter factory or the cheese factory cannot be seen. They exist as far northward as Awamii, and are scattered westward through the lie kianga and/Wairoa districts, down to uawhia. They dot the eastern seaboard ircin the l!ay of Island down to the Bay of Plenty, and are found southward as far a- Aria and Malrrie in the King ICounirv. and Kotorua in the thermal re-

There is scarcely any class of soil in the Auckland province which is not today yielding hntter-fat. The grassed bush' lands, the drained swamp lands, .hold premier place for production, because in them Nature has been storing tip through thousands of yiars fertility and humus. Cut the fern land as well as the forest land is earning pasture to-day, and even the gum lands and the pu.mic lands are beginning to produce butter-fat.

Aucklandcrs would have a greater re- ?;> it for the humble cow if they realised what an immense influence she has had in settling- the waste places of the province anil in making land profitable which would scarcely pay for working under any other class of farming. Just 1 'ore I left the city I had a chat with II:. -Veslty Spragg, the manager of the New Zealand Dairy Association. He told me that he fully expected that this season iiis Association would pay out for butter-fat and the manufacture of butter nearly £590,000. Let our city friends try to realise what effect the distribution of this sum of money is likely to have on business, and this is only one of several dairying companies in this province. Mr. Spragg" has just returned from a, visit of inspection to some of the Association's creameries. He had visited 54 out of the S-l belonging 'a the Association, and it had taken him six da\V rapid travelling bv motor-car to cover the journey. He told me that he had been very much impressed wiin the great increase in area of land under cultivation, and with the splendid condition of the pastures and the stock, lie had never before seen such numbers of sleek and high quality dairy cows, and never before had such a sanguine impression of dairying prospects in the Auckland province. Last year, he said, his Association manufactured 2.50U tons of butler. This year they expected to manufacture -I'MM tons. Part of this larire increase was, of course, due to the absorption of the Ambury-F.:iglish business, but by no means all. because nearly every creamery had increased its output, a:, .'six new creameries were added to their list during the winter.

COW AND MACHINE. IMPORTANT MILKTNti EXPERIMENTS. Every dairying country in the world will iie'interested in the experiments rccentlv made in Denmark bv X. (». Hof-man-liang, of Copenhagen, in hand and machine ' milking during the -seasons IPO7-8 and IMS-!). Four uniform lots of 10 cows and four heifers each were in the first season's experiment-, when two ot the lots were milked by machine and two bv hand during an experimental period'of about o'/j months, tine of the hand-milked lots was stripped by hand after having been maehine-niilkul. while this was not. done with the other lot until after forty-two days from the beginnim: of the period when it was deemed necessary to do so on account of the decrease, in the milk yield of the cow.. In the second season's experiments four lots of fourteen head each were formed, namely, two of aged cows and two of heifers; one of each of these was milked by hand and the other by machine. The results of the <. xperiment* showed that nearly the same amounts of milk were, in general, obtained by either method of milking. For the aged cow-, however, hand-milking appeared to give a small increase over machine milking, while the opposite was true for the heifers. The chemical composition of the milk was not ail'ected by the method of milking adopted. X» -pceial dillieiiltiewere met with in operating the machine, and the cows stood quietly during the process of milking. The great dill'ercucc in the. case of milking nnr» and heifers bv hand was found to be not nearly >o .V.'iounced by machine milking.

The results obtained indicate that one HKUi with two machine- (milkhu: four cows) I'iin do about tli.- same work as three hand-milkers, and can milk oil in UD cows in "2 to 2 1 /; hours. The bacteriological examinations of the milk drawn 'by the machine and by band showed that machine-drawn milk may have a lower bacterial content than that of milk drawn bv hand il both the machine ami the teats of the cow are kept scrupulously clean. Care in keeping the teats clean is especially important from the fact that bacteria* in dirt adhennu; to the teats are likely to be sucked into the milk pail with the air and will tend largely to increase the bacterial content of the milk.