Friesian conference approaches

Press, 12 February 1982, Page 10

Friesian conference approaches

The big South Pacific Friesian Conference is wending, its way through the North Island ’towards Christchurch where it will reconvene for the second of two formal sessions on Tuesday next week.

The conference organisers have taken a travelling approach to showing some 60 overseas visitors New Zealand dairying in general, and Friesians in particular, rather than sitting them and an equal number of participating New Zealanders down in one spot and attempting to present the same information with speakers and audiovisuals.

Overseas delegates arrived in Auckland last Sunday and spent Monday travelling around dairying districts and Friesian studs south of Auckland. The conference convened formally in Hamilton at the University of Waikato on Tuesday.

Dr Maria Stolzman from the Central Animal Breeding Office in Warsaw, in charge of a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation trial in Poland which is testing the results of Friesian/Holstein progeny from all over the dairying world, was due to speak at the conference but was delayed in reaching New Zealand. The progeny of New Zealand Friesian bulls are rated in the top three countries for milk fat, milk yield and fat percentage according to the results from those Polish trials. The United States leads the 10 participating countries for milk yield and milk fat, followed very closely by Israel and New Zealand. The Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland are the top three countries for fat percentage on results so far.

New Zealand's results in Poland reflect the N.Z. Dairy Board's emphasis on fat when selecting Friesians for normal artificial breeding service. The semen of the New Zealand bulls which was sent to Poland for the inter-country trials was chosen at random from the 1972 and 1973 sire proving schemes.

Each participating country — Britain, Canada, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, N.Z., Poland. Sweden, the U.S. and West Germany — contributed semen from its unproven black and white bulls in the normal sire proving programme. The bulls were mated to Polish black and white cows and their progeny run in a common environment on about 70 state farms.

In the past lower production figures from N.Z. Friesians have been a barrier in the highly competitive international livestock, ova trans plant and semen markets, Cattle run under this country’s low-cost, all-grass dairying system have not looked as good on paper alongside animals where grain concentrate feeding is practised. But the F.A.O. Polish trials have shown that New Zealand can produce Friesians equal to the world’s best when run at the same levels as progeny of all other countries.

It is this superior performance of N.Z. Friesians which the international visitors will appreciate,, and be keen to see in practice, as they move about New Zealand. The conference went to Ruakura on Wednesday and to private enterprise breeding centres as well as Friesian studs in the North Island yesterday and today. The delegates, from most

South Pacific and Asian countries as well as some from European countries and North America, will arrive in Christchurch on Sunday night and spend Monday, Tuesday afternoon, and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday touring studs near the city.

Delegates will not see any direct descendants of New Zealand’s first Friesian imports, at least not on the property to which they were first taken in 1884, Longbeach, near Ashburton.

The last of the Friesians were sold from Longbeach nine years ago when the property was taken over by Mr and Mrs David Thomas. Mrs Thomas is one of the Grigg family which took up Longbeach in the mid-1860s and has farmed it ever since.

The son of the original run holder John Grigg, Mr J. C. N. Grigg, imported Friesians from the Netherlands for milk and beef production. They were used for 90 years on Longbeach as dual purpose cattle. “They were big beautiful animals, standing up to 17 hands high, and not like the smaller North American-in-fluenced cows of today,” said Mrs Thomas.

The Longbeach sale of the Friesians realised $46,000. Some 43 cows made between $225 and $l2OO with an average of $505. Yearlings and heifers also brought up to $l2OO and 12 bulls averaged $360. A report in “The Press” of the sale, in April 1973, said four of the lots went to Australia and the top-priced cow went to the Friesian stud of Mr E. A. Gillman (Rangiora).

Mr Gillman said this week that unfortunately the cow died soon after the sale and left no further progeny.

But Mr Gillman commented that the Longbeach Friesians had certainly, left their mark on the breed in New Zealand.

“The Grigg’s bull Terling Brabazon was one of the top A.I. servers in New Zealand and left many good cattle," he said.