Long Service To Farmers

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31362, 6 May 1967, Page 9

Long Service To Farmers

A man who is well-known to dairy farmers in the South Island will retire at the end of the month. He is Mr H. W. Mclntosh, who has been consulting officer for the New Zealand Dairy Board in Canterbury, Otago and Southland for the last 10 years and in the whole of the South Island for seven years before that.

For 14 years Mr Mclntosh was also supervisor or advisory officer for the Canterbury District Pig Council. Mr Mclntosh has been a popular figure among farmers because of his essentially practical outlook and one of his major interests has been in the assessment of the palatability of pastures to stock. A forceful and provocative speaker, he has done much to foster interest in this aspect of pasture production. Born in Spreydon and educated at Christchurch Technical College, Mr Mclntosh was the son of a small farmer between Spreydon and Halswell. His father was also an agricultural contractor and did the cultivation work for farmers who had retired to the city but still ran a handful of stock on a few acres. The young Mclntosh eventually took over his father’s team and did work for these men, and he says that a lot of things that he learned from them still hold true. When he was still a young man he rented a dairy farm at Springston on which he remained for nine years, and it was here that he had his first taste of public life. When the late Mr P. V. Bailey called on him to seek a subscription to the Farmers’ Union, he declined to pay up until a meeting of the organisation was held in the district —• there had not been a meeting for years—and then when the meeting was held Mr McIntosh said that he was too shy to get up and decline the office when Mr Bailey proposed that he be president and he was duly elected. At the time co-operative and proprietary dairy companies in Christchurch were engaged in a “butter war,” selling their product to Christchurch stores at less than f.o.b. price. Mr Mclntosh persuaded all of the managers of the companies to attend one of the biggest meetings of dairy farmers held near Christchurch at South Springston, and the outcome of the meeting was that the managers got together and arranged to base the price on the f.o.b. price. Mr Mclntosh recalls telling them that, as farmers, they were milking the cows, but the companies in doing what they were doing were only milking the farmers. Subsequently Mr Mclntosh was appointed to the provincial executive of the Farmers’ Union and became chairman of tile dairy farmers' committee of the organisation.

At this time remits from branches in Canterbury and Westland were calling for action on the unsatisfactory situation at Addington market where there was only one pig buyer. After extensive inquiries, he said, it had been found that there was a cooperative association in the North Island which, when approached, said it would be interested in taking pigs from the South Island provided it was guaranteed 10,000.

Mr Mclntosh had the job of going round farmers to determine their support This he said, proved to be more than sufficient and he was subsequently appointed superintendent of the operation, being responsible for establishing agents, transport end killing centres for the pigs. He held this position for five years. Mr Mclntosh subsequently had a year on the road for a farm machinery firm and then joined the Canterbury District Pig Council He recalls an early bacon competition when only seven pigs were entered and Dr. C. P. McMeekan, Mr P. G. Stevens and himself were judges. Soon entries swelled to between 140 and 200 carcases. Mr Mclntosh succeeded Mr Colin How as consulting officer for the Dairy Board in the South Island. In his first season in 1949-50, he recalls, the average butterfat production of cows under test in Canterbury was 2811 b. Last year the figure was 3541 b. Advances in feeding, breeding and management had been contributing factors in the progress made, he said. Improved feeding had resulted from farmers growing better grass species and utilising them better. Possibly the greatest advance had been in the improvement in the quality of hay and silage. When the Dairy Board had taken over artificial breeding in New Zealand in 1953 about 5000 cows had been mated artificially. In the present season about one million cows or about half of the national herd was being mated in this way, and whereas at the beginning a bull whose daughters gave an increase in production over average of 101 b would be keenly sought, today a bull whose daughters gave less than a 251 b lift would be sent off to the works. There were now bulls whose progeny produced 601 b and more above average.

As already mentioned, one of Mr Mclntosh’s special interests has been in the reaction of stock to the sort at pasture that man puts in front of them. He encouraged Dr. B. R. Watkin, when he was in charge of the Grasslands Divi-

sion station at Lincoln and was conducting trials with 21 different pasture species, to start looking at this aspect.

Mr Mclntosh recalls that he had made the observation in the field that whereas some grasses were palatable others remained unpalatable to stock for several months. This work

at Lincoln with sheep, he believes, may have been the first of its type in the country and possibly much further afield. Subsequently, he followed it up with cattle on farms throughout the South Island, situated up to 400 miles apart, and here he found that results were very similar to those with sheep. In this work he persuaded a number of farmers to sow an acre of each of a series of grass species with clover when they were sowing down a new pasture. The outcome of this was the development of a pasture mixture that was high producing and contained a range of the most palatable species. This pasture mixture consists of about 51b of short rotation or Manawa ryegrass, 21b of grasslands cocksfoot, 21b of timothy, 61b of Sl7O tall fescue, 21b of white clover and 21b of cowgrass, but on lighter soils it is recommended that timothy be dropped and a half bushel of prairie grass substituted.

An example of the productivity of this sort of pasture mixture, including tall fescue, was given in Southland where the buyer of a farm stocked the whole area with six ewes to the acre. In the spring, when he noticed that the pasture with tall fescue in it seemed to be getting away, he put another two ewes to the acre on it. These ewes gave a 140 per cent lambing

and when the lambs were drafted off this paddock they averaged 4.161 b better than their mates, in spite of the fact that two ewes and almost three lambs extra were being carried to the acre.

Similarly, in South Canterbury, Mr Mclntosh said it had been found on two properties that when a 50 to 60-cow herd moved into such a paddock they gave an extra 10 to 16 gallons of milk a day.

Mr Mclntosh also maintains his enthusiasm for restoring the balance of a pasture where short rotation ryegrass has been taken out by Argentine stem weevil, by the trailing of a grubber costing £3O and then a drill behind a tractor to introduce clover or grass seed. Mr Mclntosh is particularly Impressed with the effectiveness of the discussion group system operating in the dairy industry as a means of extension. In the country, he says, there are some 230 groups with more than 2000 members.

He believes that it is a superior form of extension to any single advisory officer or farm improvement club and is helpful to the adviser in keeping him in touch with farmers* problems, as well as, enabling him to reach a much greater number of farmers. There was also a spill-over effect from these farmers to their neighbours, he said. While he regretted that requests for visits did not often come from the farmers who were in the lowest producing group, he said that a most hopeful sign for the future of farming in the country was that at field days, like those at Lincoln, 90 per cent of the party were in the under-40 age group and were appreciative of what the college and research stations could offer them. Mr Mclntosh’s successor will be Mr P. Ballanger, who having finished a four-year degree course at Lincoln College, has now joined the board.