Overseas Visitors At Lincoln Conference

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30055, 13 February 1963, Page 15

Overseas Visitors At Lincoln Conference

There is an international flavour about the annual conference of the Ne w Zealand Society of Animal Production which is ait present being held ait Lincoln. There are visitors from Jugoslavia, Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and Japan. Three Jugoslavs in New Zeeland for six months on Food and Agriculture Organisation fellowships attended. Mr N. Jordanovski, who is a lecturer in nutrition and physiology ait the University of Skopje, has been studying sheep-breeding and fattening at Lincoln College and has been on a Sheep farm near Hamilton where the farmer was a follow countryman who came to New Zealand 32 years ago. Mr S. Stajic is a veterinarian in a diagnostic station at Shabac. He is specialising in parasitology at the Wallace ville animal research station. The other member of the group, Mr K. Mikulec, a lecturer in animal husbandry at the University of Zagreb, is investigating beef cattlebreeding and production and meat production in New Zealand. Mr Stajic said that there were about 13m sheep and about 6m beef and dairy cattle in his country. Domestic sheep, which were

crossed with the Merino for wool production, were also milked extensively to make cheese which, he said, was exported to Britain and Germany.

The Japanese is Mr Kazuo Watanabe, a technical officer of the feed and management section of the National Institute of Animal Industry at Nishinasuno. On a scholarship financed by the Japanese Government he is spending a year in New Zealand studying animal nutrition at the Ruakura animal research station.

The first scientist to deliver a paper at the conference yesterday was Dr. G. B. Garner, associate professor of agricultural chemistry at the University of Missouri, who is at present working at Massey College. Mr W. J. Hartley, formerly of the Wallaceville animal research station and now senior lecturer in veterinary medicine at the Sydney University veterinary school, who is well known for his work on selenium in New Zealand, gave a paper on selenium and ewe infertility.

Professor D. McFarlane, who was formerly executive officer of the Gisborne Veterinary Club and who is now at the Sydney veterinary school, is also attending the conference. He is a former president of the society. An English visitor, Dr. D. J. Minson, is to present a paper on methods of assessing herbage feeding value.