LONDON REQUIREMENTS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 183, 18 May 1939, Page 8

LONDON REQUIREMENTS.

SUITABILITY OF TYPE.

For some years now the New Zealand Meat Board’s competition for export lambs in district groups has been held in the various centres, and always, selected pens are judged on the hoof, then on the hooks in New Zealand and finally in London (says the “Auckland Weekly News.”) It seldom happens that the New Zealand judges place the entries in the same order as they arc placed in Smithliold, and this fact suggests that the system of judging here is open to improvement. That, however, is not the point we are concerned with at the moment, but rather the cabled reports of this year’s London judging, namely, “too much coarse fat that cuts to waste.” . v

The report this year is just about the same as we read last year, and the year before that, and unless some notice is really taken, it will be'-the same again next year and the year after. It should'be remembered, too, that this is criticism levelled at the very tops of our export lambs nothing else is entered in the competition classes—so what must be said of the general run of New Zealand’s export lamb! Of course nothing very drastic is said or we could not maintain our position on the chief market in the world, but'it is a matter worthy of consideration to-day whim this Dominion has.had to accept a modest restriction on the tonnage of exports to the United Kingdom. If producers of fat lambs could, in one stroke, eliminate the “coarse fat that cuts to waste,” from the carcases of fat lambs, they would, easily bring their present total of carcases within the export limit allowed. Easier said than done, will be the comment of many of the readers of these notes—yes, but not impossible. Buyers in the United Kingdom evidently want to buy meat and not fat, and that being the case, we should lay ourselves out to sell them meat. The weight of a lamb does not necessarily govern the proportion of fat to meat. Breeders know from experience that a light lamb can be very fat and a heavier one quite lean, but even the buyer in England does not want his lamb all lean; be evidently likes some fat with it, because we are told of those lambs “carrying too high a percentage of fat to lean.” ■

It is the happy medium we want and there is much evidence pointing to the fact that feeding is perhaps the most important factor in producing the correct type of carcase. The “ideal butcher’s meat” so frequently referred to by the judges overseas can only come from pastures containing all'the elements essential to steady, healthy growth. There must he no check in the feeding of either the ewes or the lambs if the best results are to be obtained.