Herd Testing

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22435, 23 June 1938, Page 10

Herd Testing

It is disappointing that the president of the Dominion Group Herd Testing Association should have to report to the annual conference of the association a fall in the number of cows under test. The fall is not very large, certainly: from 252,185 in the previous season to 245,178. But the want of a recovery to the higher figure even of the 1934-35 season, when it was 265,944, is serious enough to engage attention. Mr Herron attributes the decline to two causes: the shortage of labour on the farms and the prevalence of disease in the herds. Without any desire to drive home a political point, it must be said that the Government should be invited to note this particular example of the general truth, that its policy is fulfilling itself in the creation of grave problems on the land.' The second is of course one more piece of evidence that emphasises the Do-

minion’s extraordinary backwardness in the study of the causation and prevention of animal diseases. (The recent helplessness of the complete agricultural and research organisation against the outbreak of facial eczema was evidence much more disturbing.) The importance of herd testing is not easily over-rated; and it is far from over-rating it to say that it is worth a great and special effort to reverse the present downward tendency and steadily raise the number of herds and cows under test. The Census and Statistics Department, late in 1936, carried out a survey of dairy farms on a principle which, in the end, brought just over 40 per cent, of the national herd within its statistical scope. The results showed that only 14 per cent, of the herds covered were under test during 1935-36, and only 17 per cent, of the cows. The inclusion of cows which had been under test at some period up to and including 1935-36 raised the percentage of test cows covered by the inquiry only to 31. It is not to be supposed that figures embracing the Dominion herd would be better; they are more likely to be distinctly lower. But the value of testing is not an abstract one. It is the value of a direct measure of herd efficiency and of a guide to herd improvement. In his last report to the Minister for Agriculture the Director-General said this: “ The Department of Agriculture has “ played little part in developing methods of “ stock improvement . . . and until it is pro- “ perly equipped in this respect its full function “ as the national guiding agent in progressive “ development cannot be realised.” He said also: “ The average efficiency of our farming “is being seriously lowered by the percentage “of low efficiency farms. Standards represent- “ ing real efficiency are urgently required to be “ defined and attained.” It is quite obvious that farmers who have no exact measure of the efficiency of their stock are groping after efficiency in herd management in the dark. At the dairy conference in February, a remit was adopted recommending official consideration of the establishment of herd testing as a national service. It is at least certain that herd testing should be a service covering the whole industry. The basis of the organisation is a question more open. But it should be answered soon; the tide is running the wrong way.