OUR UNEVEN FLOCKS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 42, 13 November 1907, Page 2

OUR UNEVEN FLOCKS.

A BIT OF ADVICE FROM PRIME CANTERBURY. BIIEED MORE AND BUY LESS. Mr. "SV. Lowrio, the director of Lincoln Agricultural College, talking to a Dominion representative at tlio Christchurch Show, .said lie considered the thing most urgently needed among sheep farmers was to work toward getting a more even class of breeding ewes. "That," lie said, "is a line of improvement that 1 think admits of the greatest progress with, after all, comparatively little effort. The pure breeds of sheep wo havo got 'are practically as good as they are bred anywhere. 16 the English Leicester sheep we cruel in that they maintain the old useful type of English. Leicester sheep, from which it is apparent the Home breeders got away by the infusion of "improved" Lincoln blood. But, while wo have these purebred Hocks in a very high degreo of excellence, the averago farmer's Hock of to-day is made up of —very often —something lie has bought—something he has not bred. His ewes, therefore, are mixed in quality and character. Many of them are not best adapted for the purpose for which lie Keeps them. And the whole thing results in unevenness in the wool clips and unevenaess in the lambs. As the large holdings have been subdivided, the opportunities for buying good lines of half-bred ewes —or, speaking in wider terms, of breeding ewes —have lessened ; and those farmers who have been relying on what they could buy for making up their breeding (lock havo had to pick up ewes here and there, with the result that they havo got a motley lot. "How is this improvement to be brought about? The first thing is for everybody to. s recognise that the present is an unsatisfactory procedure, and to start therefore to keep back their own best long-wool crossbred ewo lambs. The prices alone that they havo to pay for two-tooth breeding ewes would justify this. By the practice, of selecting their own best ewe lambs—and unfortunately •it ■is always the - best lambs that are first ready for the butchers—they would soon find out which cross of ewes suited their district best. The cross-bred ewes that we are using at the college farm are sired by Border Leicesters out of a halfbred English Leicester-merino owe. But in this, of course, it is a matter for test and experiment in each 'district. In the North Island, for example, it is very generally felt that the Romney-Lincoln cross is. the most valuable ewe. Well, when the farmers have secured that —whether it is a threequarter bred English Leicester or the crossbred I have already mentioned—if they havo secured an even line of ewes, with a good useful flccco, then by using good rams the quality of the freezing lambs will go up, and t'ho profits of tho farm from the sheep will be increased."