Noted Hereford Breeder Visiting New Zealand

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30338, 14 January 1964, Page 2

Noted Hereford Breeder Visiting New Zealand

Sons frequently take over their fathers’ farms, but it is less usual for a daughter to do so. Five years ago Mrs Mary Read, of Lanehead Farm, Eaton Bishop, Herefordshire, took over a Hereford stud established many years previously by her father, and has made such a success of it that today she is one of the top breeders of Herefords in Britain.

On holiday from the 400-acre farm, she and her husband, Captain W. A. A. Read, a former Comet pilot for 8.0.A.C., who retired recently, are on a month’s tour of the country. Cutting short their stay in Southland by two days because of wet weather, they arrived in Christchurch on Sunday and left yesterday for Auckland. It is Mrs Read’s third visit to the Dominion, and her husband’s first.

The Reads spent yesterday afternoon at the Canterbury Museum. ‘‘We read that Joyce Grenfell <who visited Christchurch last year) said this museum was one of the best in the world, so we had to come to see it,” Mrs Read said, pausing in the hall of early New Zealand history to be interviewed an hour before she had to leave for the plane.

Everything certainly was beautifully laid out. and clearly and fully labelled, she said. Although she had had to keep buying more woollies, and much of the scenery and countryside she had looked forward to showing her husband had been obscured by rain, it had been “an absolutely lovely holiday,” Mrs Read said. “Very like an English summer,” Captain Read added with a smile. They plan to return in two or three years. Eaton Herefords have won many trophies for Mrs Read in recent years. In 1962 her champion bull. Eaton Musterer, enabled her to become i the first woman breeder to win the breed championship at the Royal Show at New-castle-on-tyne, and even more notable, enabled her to be the first woman breeder to take the bull of the year trophy since the competition was inaugurated by her father, Mr Owen Hellyer, in 1955.

Last season a heifer Mrs Read bred, Eaton Curly 33, was the female champion at the Royal Show at Stoneleigh, Worcester, and . w®i | joint winner of the Burke Trophy, which was contested by the top 16 pairs of various breeds of beef cattle. Though she has never yet sold a bull to New Zealand. jMrs Read has exported animals to Canada, South America, Russia, Israel, South Africa and Jugoslavia. All the Eaton Herefords are horned, and Mrs Read has no intention of changing to polled stock, but she has been very impressed by polled Herefords in New Zealand. They were better than British stock. Captain and Mrs Read have visited several Hereford herds since their airrival, including that of Mr J. A. Holm, near Invercargill. the oldestestablished in New Zealand. As well as the 75 breeding cows and the stud bulls, poultry, pigs and potatoes are also produced on the farm, and a few sheep are kept. Captain Read takes a keen general interest in the farm, but his particular contribution to it is the keeping of all the books.

In complete contrast to breeding bulls, Mrs Read enjoys collecting art indigenous to the countries she visits. She has Chinese works bought in Hong Kong, paintings of this country done by the New Zealand artist

Douglas Badcock, and others from Australia by the aboriginal artist, Albert Namatjira. It was while she was on holiday in Australia several years ago that Mrs Read met her husband. He had been posted to fly between Sydney and Darwin and she was in the Northern Territory city eolleeting aboriginal art and boomerangs.