FARMING NOTES.

Waipa Post, Volume XII, Issue 943, 18 May 1920, Page 7

FARMING NOTES.

NEXT SEASON'S DAIRY PRODUCE.

OUTLOOK CONSIDERED GOOD

The disposal of the new season's dairy produce is now commanding attention, and representatives of big buying firms in England are reported to be actively operating along the West Coast with a view to making substantial contracts, particularly as regards butter. A reliable Stratford authority on dairy matters states that on the fixed selling price of 3/ per lb for imported butter in London dairy factories will receive 2/3 per lb clear, plus 3d per lb for casein to those factories manufacturing it. Providing there is no increase in shipping rates cheese factories should net about the same amount. Dairy producers consider that the outlook is distinctly good.

DEVELOPING THE HEIFER.

In a general discussion on farm topics, a writer in a Canadian farm jornal says:—

I do not think we can grow the dairy heifer too large so long as there is no tendency to roughness. We want more cows that are well developed when young. What a heifer loses when young she can never regain, for. when she becomes a cow she has the strain of producing and reproducing. The large heifer, with plenty of constitution to withstand hardship, and capacity to consume rough food, is generally the high producing cow.

In feeding our heifers we start when born, put them in a pen by themselves, teach them to drink, feeding new milk for five or six weeks, then gradually change them to skim milk, taking about one week to make the change to feeding skim milk, with a mixture of bran, oats, oilcake meal, equal parts, and feed dry after the milk with what clover hay they will consume readily. When about three months old a little silage or roots or both may be< fed. We believe in feeding this until about one year old, when they are turned out to grass, if it is pasture season, and let them run on good grass through summer months. With this treatment they come into stable in early fall in god condition, and should be in splendid shape to eommenec their milking period at about thirty months, weighing from one .thousand to one thousand and two hundred pounds. As far as too much size, constitu" tion and vigor is concerned, I do not think there is much danger of feeding too liberally so as to injure a well-developed body, which is so necessary in a highly productive cow. Too many of our heifers are undersized, caused by poor breeding and poorer feeding. There is a limit with respect to- fat. We prefer not to have growing stock too fat, but as a growing stock are underfed, and, as a result, in poor condition, coming ,to their freshening period very much handicapped through lack of care and proper feed.