It appears that the opportunity to produce “milk for the towns” was a big talking point in the Irish winter of 1932, as farmers were advised that “there is still cash in it”.
On page 10 of the December 1932 edition of Free State Farmer – a copy of which I received in the post – there sits a thoughtful article urging dairy farmers to target busy boroughs.
It was outlined that, in the neighbourhood of towns, milk supplying is usually “a fairly profitable business”.
Considering, as it says, that in many centres the urban seller can get “1/4 a gallon for new milk, compared with the five pence, plus returned skim at the creamery”.
Although the profit would seem to be big, in reality, the writer states, it is not so high.
While it’s outlined that delivery, breakages, labour and feed entail “a rather high expenditure”, the writer contends that “there is no reason why farmers in urban areas should not do considerably better”.
The article continues with quite a progressive analogy for the period:
First of all the average herd of cows used to supply milk in the towns are only moderate procurers; in the second they are rarely tested so that there are occasional ‘pensioners’ amongst them; and on the third place only one dairy farmer in a dozen feeds his herd properly.
For a dairy business one should regard the cow as a machine.
That is see that the machine is efficient, quite healthy and capable of a big yield.
Then feed each machine with enough raw material to turn out the maximum finished product – that is milk.
In summer feeding it is a simple matter, the cows being merely turned out on pasture; but when winter comes the animals are very often fed in the most haphazard manner.
We do not say that there is not a great deal of valuable experience handed down and used by our farmers, for there is, but it is difficult for a farmer to get his workmen to use experience they have not got – and that only the farmer himself has got.
Then too a great deal of nonsense has been handed down.
Many dairy farmers will tell you, quite innocently, that ‘such and such a food’ is the greatest thing in the world for milk.
Dozens of foods can be used and dozens of mixtures, but the main thing to see is that the foods used are palatable, adequate and balanced.
Where good hay is available no expensive foods are necessary, along with ordinary farm cereals, to produce economically the highest milk yield of which the animal is capable.
Where good hay is not available a supplement in the shape of cake or some protein rich food is necessary. But in dealing with this end of the business we should go deliberately about making up a ration.
We should keep the imported and costly foods as low as possible and we should feed with an ounsel.
That old yarn: ‘I give her about half a bucket of meal and she gives half a can of milk’ should be ended forever.
Determine what the cow wants to give the utmost milk she is capable of and feed her this and no more regularly.
Then weigh the milk to see that she is keeping her end of the contract.
Disappearing dairies
In other dairy-related news from the back-end of 1932, farmers everywhere in Ireland welcomed the attempt being made to put the country’s dairy industry in a more “satisfactory position” than it had occupied heretofore.
Under the headline: ‘Breeding Better Dairy Stock‘, farmers were encouraged to take advantage of a scheme to purchase heifers.
The article begins by outlining that “the most progressive step” that has been taken and “the most important for the future of farming” is the provision of dairy heifers.
For years past we had indiscriminate breeding of the most appalling kind, until the dairy cattle of Ireland were on the verge of extinction.
The best Shorthorn heifers were being exported to England and the necessity of maintaining the store trade for the feeder and butcher drove our people to the use of non-dairy bulls.
In many Irish counties premium bulls of the Polled Angus or Hereford breeds would only be accepted with the result that the progeny were utterly unsuited for dairying, and dairying itself was beginning to disappear in many areas.
Under the Stockbreeding Act the scrub bull had to be killed or castrated so that we were compelled to import continuously pedigree stock which was doing much to ruin an important industry.
With sensible cooperation between farmers and the County Agricultural Communities we should now be in a position to change all that.
By using pedigree Shorthorn bulls with good class Shorthorn heifers and careful breeding for a few years we shall be able not only to resurrect a first class foundation stock of cows, but to produce first class bulls also in which the small man will get his chance.
Stay tuned to AgriLand for more farming-related stories that are almost 100 years old…