6 BRITISH DAIRYING. 



An Accessory Farm. 



Besides the College Farm, Mr. Barham has an outlying farm, 

 down at Wadhurst, in Sussex, where he keeps his surplus cattle 

 the cows that are dry for calving, the young ones for replen- 

 ishing the herd, and so on ; a sort of preparatory school to the 

 College Farm, a nursery in which the young bovines are trained 

 Tor the practical work they have to do later on. He has also a 

 sort of supplementary milk-producing farm at Hampstead 

 a semi-model farm on which 30 to 46 cows in milk are 

 kept. In order to keep up a constant supply of milk for the 

 suburban homes of the locality, it is, of course, necessary to 

 have cows calving pretty well all the year round, particularly 

 in the autumn and winter. But a constant supply is not all 

 that is aimed at constant, I mean, in respect of quantity; for 

 a constant quality is also wanted, and a succession of newly- 

 calved cows gives to the milk that freshness and tone, so to 

 speak, which are required by the somewhat fastidious house- 

 holder of to-day. 



The question of uniformity in quality and character of 

 the milk is a matter of quite as much importance to a fashion- 

 able milk trade in suburban London as it is to the provi- 

 sion dealer who supplies the West End families with butter, 

 and I shall have more to say about it in a subsequent chapter. 

 Surrounded by an increasing population, in a favourite suburb 

 of London, the College Farm has a ready retail trade for all its 

 milk, at fourpence a quart. This, indeed, is a primary feature 

 in an ideal dairy farm, which at the same time is a profitable 

 one. Personally, I should be inclined to refuse the term ideal 

 to a dairy farm that did not yield a profit. But this, of course, 

 is a matter of opinion, for there are idealists in farming who 

 do not much care to make a profit. Years ago there were 

 a good many of them ; more than there are at the present 

 cime. 



Production of Milk. 



In the year 1890 the milk produced on the College Farm 

 amounted to 28,184 gallons. Half of the cows were Guernseys 



