STOCK FOR AUSTRALIA

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 250, 18 July 1933, Page 2

STOCK FOR AUSTRALIA

i Zebu Cattle from Texas INTERESTING EXPERIMENT The Union Company’s steamer Waihemo, which left Wellington yesterday for Melbourne, via southern ports, carries, as a deck cargo, 19 head ot zebu.,or Indian cattle, bound from Texas for Queensland.-.

' The introduction of these cattle, known in America as Brahmas, is the outcome of a visit to Texas some twelve years ago, by Dr. Gilruth, late chief veterinary surgeon to the Department of Agriculture in New Zealand, and now chief of the Pouncil of Scicyitific and Industrial Research in Australia. Dr. Gilruth was impressed by the successful experiments resulting /by the crossing of zebu and British breeds of cattle, and his impressions, supported by further recent research, resulted in the importation of these humpbacked Bos Indian tropical type of cattle, including 10 bulls and nine heifers, into Australia. These cattle, descendants of parents originally imported to the United States of America from India, interbreed readily with British cattle, and impart to their cross-bred progeny, many of their own advantages, including an ability to perspire and so withstand tropical temperatures, and an ability also to secrete, in special glands, a grease, which is repellent to ticks and ecto parasites. The zebu thrives on little food. In a month on shipboard, the nineteen head have only consumed two bags of chaff, one bag of bran, and one and a half bales of lucerne hay, daily, and they are all in excellent condition, and have maintained their weights. The heifers weigh approximately 6001 b live weight, and the bulls 15001 b, the breed being considered a particularly line type of heavy beef cattle. One particularly interesting bull on the Waihemo is a zebu-Shorthorn cross, the progeny of six generations of selective breeding on one of the largest ranches in Texas, the King Ranch. The owner of this property, one of more than 1,500,000 acres, claims that since the introduction of zebu blood into his herd, the weight of his yearlings has increased by 1501 b, and that of his three and four-year-olds by 2501 b. Some of this breed weigh more than a ton at three years old. It is expected that this breed will thrive in Northern Australia, and will eventually be more profitable than British breeds now in that area. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and a group of interested pastoralists, ar© responsible for the importation of the zebu cattle into Australia, and the experiment will, no doubt, be watched by : farmers the world over.