24 



Milk Testing in Denmark. 



[APRIL, 



This is considered to be sufficiently exact for practical pur- 

 poses and for the purposes of the control. 



One day's grazing is, according to the quality of the herbage 

 and the weight of the animals, taken as equivalent to from eight 

 to fourteen feedir.g-units. By the use of this scale it is possible 

 to express the total food given to cows as so many feeding-units, 

 and by this means to compare the results obtained under different 

 methods of feeding. 



In a report which has recently been published by the German 

 Agricultural Society,* Dr. Emil Pott devotes some attention to 

 the means by which the food consumption of the animals is 

 reckoned, and points out that the Danish system of calculation 

 by feeding-units is open to the objection that the equivalent 

 values attaching to the different feeding-stuffs are at the best 

 only approximate, since even if food values could be scienti- 

 fically calculated the quality of the materials varies in different 

 cases, while the nutritive effect of the same fodder may vary 

 according to the food with which it is combined. He recom- 

 mends in preference the use of the average market price in the 

 case of purchased feeding-stuffs and the average cost of pro- 

 duction in the case of home-grown fodder. This has been 

 adopted by many of the German Societies, and the statement of 

 how much it costs to produce so many pounds of milk con- 

 taining a certain percentage of fat is found to be better under- 

 stood than the similar calculation in feeding-units. In order 

 to enable comparison to be made, it is necessary for all the 

 societies in a district to agree on a scale of values by which 

 all the members calculate the cost of feeding. For instance, 

 in eight societies in the Rhine Province the following scale has 

 been adopted per cwt. : — Meadow hay, 2s, ; clover hay, 2s. 6d. ; 

 mangolds, 6d. ; sugar-beet, 9jd. ; linseed meal and cake, 7s. 6d. ; 

 cottonseed meal, 6s. gd. ; rape cake, 4s. 6d. ; bran, 4s. 9|d. ; 

 rice meal, 5s. id.; peas and beans, 8s. 2d. ; oats and rye, 7s. ; 

 barley, 6s. 2|d. ; maize, 6s. 6d. As one object of the control 

 is economy in feeding, that result is probably more likely to 

 be attained by keeping before the farmer's eyes the money 

 cost of each cow rather than the cost in feeding-units. 



* Kontrollvereine fiir Milchleistungen, Berlin, 1904. See also Der Wettbewerb 

 der danischen und der schwedischen Landwirte mit Deutschland, Stuttgart, 1904. 



