MILKING-TUBES: A WARNING.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume XIII, Issue 3, 20 September 1916, Page 178

MILKING-TUBES: A WARNING.

A f Taranaki farmer has written to the Department regarding a milking-apparatus which is evidently on sale in the Dominion. His letter reads as follows:

“No doubt you have come in touch with the milkingmachine, composed of rubber tubes and silver siphons to put up the cows’ teats. Unfortunately, I bought three of them last February, and I had not used them three days before ten or twelve cows were suffering from swollen udders. I had to stop using them, and all the cows came back right again except one, which became so bad that her back was up. I drenched and rugged her and . saved her life, but the back half of her udder mortified and dropped off. Will you kindly write me your opinion of this machine, and if you know of any one else who has been ‘ had ’ with it. I think it is a pity such things are sold in New Zealand for milking.” .

The condition set up in these cows is just what might have been expected to happen as a result of the use of such an apparatus in the hands of a dairy-farmer. Quite apart from the risk of setting up inflammation of the udder through direct injury to the tissues, resulting from the tubes being pushed too far up the teat, or through the introduction into the udder of germs capable of setting- up an inflammatory condition, the continued daily use of teat-tubes for milking cows is . very undesirable. Muscles guard the outflow of the milk from the teat, and in time it would probably be found that muscular relaxation has been .caused to a sufficient extent to make the cow unprofitable through leaking away of the'milk.