“Creep” Feeding Of Lambs To Be More Fully Tested

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29070, 5 December 1959, Page 17

“Creep” Feeding Of Lambs To Be More Fully Tested

(New Zealand Press Association)

GISBORNE, December 4. Experiments with a system of feeding lambs ahead of the ewes with which they are running by leaving spaces for them to pass through fences to fresh pasture and later return to their mothers have not produced conclusively favourable results in New Zealand. The system is to be further tested at the Ruakura Animal Research Station. This information was given to the Grasslands Association’s conference by Dr. L. R. Wallace, senior principal scientific officer at , Ruakura, whom the conference' president (Mr ,C. E. Iversen) described as a world authority on the nutrition of grazing sheep. Asked whether experience in New Zealand with the “creep” method of feeding young lambs was as good as those obtained in the United Kingdom, Dr. Wallace said that the present indications were that under New Zealand conditions there was no particular advantage. Another matter raised in discussion referred to his earlier suggestion that a high stocking rale and a consequent high per-

acre production were more desirable than a high individualanimal return gained by a lower rate of stocking. In reply to a questioner who quoted the general results of scanning of a number of returns as giving counter results, Dr. Wallace said that his conclusions were supported by tests both at Lincoln and Ruakura.

It was certainly true, he admitted, that on a high stocking rate on a fat-lamb farm the weights of individual lambs were slightly lower, but realisation from meat and wool left no doubt of the greater profitability of stocking at a rate which ensured that all the fodder produced on a farm was consumed. “Of course, there is a level of stocking above which no farmer would go, but I am strongly convinced that on many fat-lamb farms more feed is grown than is profitably consumed,” he added.

Mr Iversen, who is senior lecturer in plant science at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, supported Dr. Wallace’s statements. On light Canterbury land, he said, fat-lamb farmers were carrying four ewes to the acre, and were doing well at that rate.