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In the main, cheese rinds have been clean and free from mould, and, though the dry season has been responsible to some extent, some credit is also due to managers and Instructors for the attention given to this important detail. Butter, on the whole, has been neatly packed and finished. Some odd cases of loose tapes and badly sealed fibre cartons have occurred, but after some instructions these defects have been remedied. The impressed brand on the surface of the block of butter is in many cases obliterated when fibre-board cartons are used. This seems to be difficult to avoid when cartons of butter are stacked in the factory cool room in a soft condition. With the greater use of the carton container, some solution is desirable to maintain the neat impression of the Fernleaf brand, which was a feature of the butter packed in the wooden box. Butter and Cheese Packages.—The fibre-board container now being used extensively is proving satisfactory as a container for butter. Factory staffs are becoming efficient in assembling, sealing, and taping, so that the carton usually presents a neat appearance on arrival at the stores for grading. Wooden boxes of white-pine and rimu or a mixture of these timbers are still used by a few factories in the North, and the sub-standard white-pine box is used exclusively in the South. On the whole, cheese-crates have been up to standard, though some ports report that considerable breakages of battens have occurred. Pinus radiata is now used extensively for cheese-crates, and when the crate is made solely of good timber of this type there is no cause for complaint. In some cases the timber is immature or very knotty and the crate will not stand up to rough usage. The beech timber in the South Island makes a very solid cheese-crate, but apparently is being used for other purposes, as a number of factories in the south are now being supplied with Pinus radiata timber. General. —Arrangements were made at the beginning of the season for a trial in connection with the splitting of grade points within a class to be carried out at Auckland. This was done to see what advantage, if any, would accrue to factories if such a system of grading was adopted and also to satisfy the claim made by some managers that their produce was being penalized under the present method of line grading. The results of the trial are not yet available, but it is believed that there have been very few occasions when variations in quality were sufficient to justify such action. Butter Instruction Manufacture. —Quality generally has shown a further improvement. Several factories which up to the beginning of the present season have been consistently making low-scoring butter have this year been manufacturing butter comparable with the best. This has been the result of the favourable season, the installation of extra plant, and more efficient farm-dairy instruction. Again, because of favourable weather throughout the autumn, winter, spring, and early summer, growth has been uniform, and as a result feed flavours, including that of land-cress, have been less in evidence. The opinion that there is not much room for growth of land-cress in a close-pasture sward has apparently again been upheld by experience during the past season. This leads to the conclusion that with an improvement in pasture-management not only will production be increased but the incidence of land-cress flavour will be reduced. From an inspection of farms where cream having land-cress flavour was produced there was evidence of considerable overstocking, with resultant opening of swards, which permitted the growth of cress.

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