DAIRY FARMING IN IRELAND.

Western Star, Issue 1154, 28 May 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

DAIRY FARMING IN IRELAND.

While dairy farming: in every other country has made amazing strides, in Ireland it has stood stock still. The methods of sixty years ago are employed to-day. Cows calve according to their own sweet will; they are turned out to graze upon deteriorated pastures, full of mosses and plants that produce barrenness and abortion ; and while they are thus poisoned in summer, they are half starved in winter. There is hardly such' a thing as winter dairying in Ireland, although it is evident that winter offers the best opportunity of earning good protfis. The result is that the average yield of an Irish cow, which ought to be 200 lbs. of very superior butter per annum, is only 150 lbs. of very inferior butter. To make the matter worse, the cows are frequently fed on mangolds and turnips, which so unpleasantly flavour the butter that excessive salting is necessary in order to conceal the fact. Then the milking is done in an unsystematic and wasteful way, and, when * ne milk is obtained, the preparation of butter from it is performed after,a fashion that hardly bears relating. In the vast majority of cases the farmers use their ordinary dwelling and sleeping rooms as their dairy-rooms. You may at any time walk into the house of a well-to-do Irish farmer and find the milk placed all round the bed-room to set for cream. After the cream is set it is churned—never-mind how; and when, finally, the butter is made, it is salted to an extent which really amounts to adulteration, is dripping with Water (20 per cent, of water is not uncommon), and is generally in a sloppy and greasy Eventually it finds its way to the market, either in lumps tied round With a cloth, or in a dirty firkin ; after which it is transported to England or elsewhere in vessels which!_ have perhaps jnst discharged a cargo of coal or paraffin. Can it be Wondered at that Irish butter fails to hold the field against the well-worked, fresh, clean butter sent over in neat little rolls from Normandy or in hermetically sealed tins from Denmark f Why, even butterine is preferred to the second grades of Irish butter. When Colonel Saunderson lately stated in the House of Commons that the butter sold at Cork! for 6d a pound was chiefly used for the adulteration of butterine, he might have been speaking the literal truth, although the remark was treated as a joke at the time. Thus we see that the breed of cattle is bad ; the pastures are badly managed and fertilised; there are no suitable dairy buildings ; there is great ignorance of proper methods ; there is a total absence of the necessary mechanical appliances, and 'there is an absolute indifference as to the conditions in which the finished article finds its way into the market. If raattters go on like this another year or two it will surprise ho one to find that dairy-farming must be abandoned in Ireland.—lndustrial Ireland, by Robert Dennis.