TESTS ON N.Z. PIGS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29726, 20 January 1962, Page 7

TESTS ON N.Z. PIGS

A N ultra-sonic testing machine for testing the depth of back fat on pigs, similar to the one above seen in action at the Royal Smithfield show at Earls Court, London, has been in use at the Korokanui pig-breeding centre of the New Zealand Pig Breeders’ Council at Te Awamutu for the last two months. A spokesman for the centre said this week that a pilot scheme was in operation on a number of farms in the Waikato using the machine,

and by March it was hoped that sufficient data would have been obtained to make an appraisal of the machine’s value. At Korokanui the machine is being used each week on the batches of pigs going away for slaughter, and the results are then compared with the standard measurements of fat depth on the carcases. A scale of conversion has been calculated on the correlation of the two systems of recording. Last year an investigation of the ultra-sonic method was made by the industrial development department at the University of Canterbury for a local pig breeder, but it was found there were a number of problems involved and a full-scale study of the method would have proved costly. The project was dropped. A member of the engineering staff of the department, Mr T. H. Scott, said this week that he had continued to follow up overseas literature on the method, and one of the problems in the use of the techniques was the skill of the operator in interpreting the results. In the United States the operator was usually associated with the killing works and was in a position to compare the results with the final carcase.