LAND, STOCK & CROPS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 193, 29 May 1934, Page 7

LAND, STOCK & CROPS

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

(By "The Tramp")

Dr. A. H. H. Fraser, of the Rowatt Research Institute, addressing young farmers recently, said that Smithfield was the market for fixing the price, of fat lambs, and in Smithfield they wanted lambs about 451 b dead weight, and ewes about 561 b.

Scotland's chief competitors in sheep were New Zealand, Australia, the Argentine and the South American counties. New Zealand sent the small carcase type of lamb. As lamb and mutton were luxury articles, the consumers, mostly middle-class people, liked a small delicate kind of meat.

Therefore, said Dr. Fraser, it should be the aim of those feeding lambs to get them fat at from 401 bto 501 b weight. For half bred and grey-faced lambs the basis of feeding was grass, young grass being best, as there, was more protein and minerals and it was free from parasites.

Better roads and better truck performance have given a great impetus In many parts of the Commonwealth to motor trucking of live-stock. This development applies not only to Australia, for overseas the use of the motor truck for this class of transport lias assumed .very large proportions. For instance, in the United States half the live-stock sold in the principal 17 markets of that country is trans-pox-ted by motor trucks. As a matter of interest it may be mentioned that in 1925 some 5,373,000 head oi stock were transported by motors> in 1932 the cattle, calves, pigs and sheep so transported totalled 23,381,456, and in 1933 the aggregate had reached 30,326,915 head of live-stock hauled- by motors. Hauls up to 500 miles are not uncommon in America, but the average distance in that country is about 100 miles.

"Of course there is a revolution at work in our world. ' There is a revolution, and we are in it. What is more, there is a revolution and we are doiug it. Our job in Britain is to do the revolution, and do, it better than anyone else." So said Mr Elliott (Minister of Agriculture) when he spoke on the wireless in the final talk in the "Whither Britain?" series.

"As Minister of Agriculture, I am certainly more concerned with home affaire than with foreign. Agriculture, which is still the greatest industry in our land, and, of course,, infinitely the most vital, had a surfeit of liberty till it sickened and nearly died of it. Any man was free to grow: anything he liked here under any conditions, and any man was free to grow anything he liked anywhere abroad and send it here, equally without any condition. "Under these conditions agriculture was not pfospering in Great Britain — it was decaying. It was running down. It was about to come to a dead stop. That was in the nature if things, bound to be so. The average man here, producing the average crop, could not compete, and cannot compete, and will never be able to compote with the selected man in the whole world-area producing the selected crop in the selected spot, and putting it on the market here at the selected moment."

. Mr Boutflour does not tell us that the modern cow is of little use from a milking point of view, declares a Dutch correspondent writing to a British farm journal. He tells us—and this is something quite different—that the system of giving attention to show point's and "type" in dairy cattle ,is absolutely detrimental to the economic good of the dairy industry. If we want useful cows, we must select the cows that will give a profitable return in milk for the food consumed and that will continue to do so for 12 to 15 years. And we must select the bulls that will sire such cows as daughters. If, on the other hand, we want beautiful cows with which to win ribbons at the shows, we must breed from the prettiest cows and mate them to the bull that sires the prettiest daughters. ' In trying to improve a strain of useful dairy cattle, all we want in our animals is real constitution, the ability to "deliver the goods." If in breeding wo hamper ourselves by any system of selection according to spurious "constitution" such as straight backs, fine tails, and such-like, we make real success harder to obtain. Breeding for milk and show in one breed is almost as bad as breeding for milk and beef in one breed.

The dual-purpose beef-and-milk or milk-and-show cow is to be compared to the red-painted pickaxe we see, hanging in our railway trains to be' lised in case of fire. This tiling is too clumsy to be a good axe, too light to bo a good pick. Or it might bo compared to the combination tool, hammer and corkscrew in one, that eyery wife; gives to her husband once! Mr Farrar clearly expresses the idea that quality and type are practically the same thing, and that unless a cow lias type she, cannot have quality. This is quite a common, idea in such countries as England and my own (Holland), where, cattle breeders have looked upon their occupation as upon a hobby in which they could indulge because they were prosperous anyhow. Real cattle fanciers want to believe (or they want,their wives to believe) that this breeding for shows has an economic as well as a sentimental reason. But they are only deceiving themselves, as some'of them find out in times like these, when they would like to make some money out of their cows instead of having them cost money. I am not greatly concerned with the confirmed show fanciers, but when there is. danger of really practical dairymen being taught that judging eattie according to exterior points will help them to breed better cattle, it is time for someone to" point out that it will never bo anything but an economic drawback and a great hindrance.