BEEF PRODUCTION

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 98, 6 February 1936, Page 8

BEEF PRODUCTION

DEMANDS OF THE PRESENT DAY

DRASTIC ALTERATIONS IN TYPE. DECLINING INTEREST IN DOMINION. From time to time criticism lias been levelled by overseas visitors at the quality of beef cattle in New Zealand. Some of this has been justified, and it is obvious to anyone with a knowledge of beer requirements that even now our station cattle air© often not beef animals other than in name. They are certainly not of the type favoured in England, the United States of America and Argentina as suitable for “baby beef” production, or even for line-qual-ity chillers. ■ The critics of our cattle, however, have perhaps not made due allowance for the purpose for which cattle have in the past been kept in this country, and the valuable service which they have efficiently performed, states the “New Zealand Herald.”

In New Zealand, and particularly in the North Island, where newly-felled hush country was being brought into pasture, cattle have been necessary to prevent “second growth” of native shrubs and fern, to open up tracks through felled logs and rubbish, through which the sheep could follow them, and, most important of all on our light, pumiceous soils, to consolidate the surface with their trampling, and thus prepare it for the permanent establishment of the better quality, shallow-rooted grasses. have served, and still perform, a further most useful service in conjunction with sheep, in keeping the pastures from becoming coarse and tufty, and in consuming, and thus destroying, the sheep parasites which shelter in this rough feed awaiting tlieir natural hosts.

Not Good Beef Type. To satisfactorily perform their varied role, it has been necessary to use particularly hardy cattle of a leggy and rangy type, and the heavier-honed and bigger-framed they were the more efficiently they did their job on the rough country. Further, they were of more use for breaking-in and consolidating when fully grown than as youngsters, hence it has become tho practice to keep steers until they reached four years of age, and sometimes older. There are the antithesis of the type of beef cattle required for baby beef and chillers, for their very hardiness and vigour precluded their having the quality of meat, small hone, early maturity, and propensity to fatten rapidly required in the beef most in demand bv consumers to-day. Our grazing country is now, however, rapidly reaching that stage of establishment when cattle will ho no longer required for “breaking-in” purposes, and indeed this already applies to a large part of our grazing lands. Breeding cows can now he devoted to keeping the pasture in order for sheep, with high quality beef production as the main objective with the steers and other surplus progeny. Following the development of the fat lamb export business, we have experienced a slackening of interest in heel production on fully-developed grazing land, and this has been actuated hv the employment of many of the richest areas for dairying. The necessity tor the production and use of beef cattle was greater, however, than it is at the present time if the production of our pasture is to he fully maintained, for without cattle we are courting disaster with our sheep. Each is the complement of the other, and where both are employed simultaneously profits are increased and the risks attendant upon one-type grazing considerably reduced. In order to make beef production really profitable, however, we must drastically reorganise both the type of cattle and the methods of grazing at present employed. We still definitely need beef cattle, but these are not now required to do the hard scavenging work of earlier years. Breeding cows and young stock will do the work just as well as the mature bullocks favoured in past years, and into the bargain a compact, early-maturing type, producing high-quality beef, must replace the gaunt, heavy-honed ranger of former favour.

New Perfection. Tt takes some little time to educate the producer to an entirely new standard of perfection; to 'get him to visulise as his ideal a very different beast from that which has served him well in the past; hut through our stud beef cattle breeders, and through the criticism of our overseas consumers, we are fast accomplishing this change-over. The objective of the beef breeder today must he an animal that is ready for the freezing works at two years of age, or younger, for there is a profitable demand for these where old, coarse beef is a drug on the market. The ‘'breed"' is not so important as tbe “type,” for each of the popular beef breeds has a niche which it can most usefully fill, and through selection and the employment of the right type of hulls, baby beef producers can he bred in the matter of a few years. These must lie low-set, deep and thick animals, with abundant capacity, and yet with much lighter hone than we have been used to admiring in our beef cattle. Quality of meat and the disposition of the fat in proper proportion through the lean must he understood. and the outward indication of these’ desirable hidden qualities appreciated by breeders and graziers before we can produce beef that will commend itself to the discriminating consumer.

The relationship between a fine, thin hide, with soft, dense and fine hair and fine-grained, tasty and tender meat is

not generally known, or appreciated, by tile average farmer, nor is the conformation that gives early maturity, a preponderance of meat on the most valuable cuts, and the shapeliness of the “small joints” that the overseas consumer now demands.

Apart from a drastic alteration in the type of our beef cattle, the treatment and feeding necessary to produce baby beef and chillers differs entirely from that employed in the paso. Whereas the milking qualities of our beef breeds of cattle have been largely neglected, the ability of the mother to give her calf an abundant supply of milk for as long; as possible is all-im-portant. Feeding after weaning must follow more the practices adopted in England and America, where greenstuff. grain, hay and concentrated foods carry the fat weaner on in this condition until it goes into the works. This feeding is by no means beyond our capabilities, even on the average quality land devoted to mixed grazing. Tt involves a certain amount of agricultural work for the 'provision of crops, the produce of which has in the past been sold for consumption elsewhere than on the farm. There is, however, no known method of disposing of such produce more profitably than “selling it on the hoof,” as the Americans say. That is, feeding it on the farm to animals which will he sold fat.