SOUTH ISLAND LAMB

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 90, 18 April 1939, Page 9

SOUTH ISLAND LAMB

THE SHIELD COMPETITION

(By Air-Mail, from "The Post's" London

Representative.) LONDON, March 23,

Southland retained the shield presented annually by the New Zealand Meat Producers' Board for the South Island" District Lamb Competition. At Smithfield this week' it was .again placed first of ten districts for the best display. East Southland was a close second,: with f Centrai Otago third, and Mid-Canterbury 'fourth.

The best pen in; the entire exhibit was sent by Mid-Canterbury. It was pen' 46, and the judges,.Messrs. F. H. Dennison and E. H. Fitter, appointed by the. Imported' Meat Trade Association, said that it comprised "three exceedingly good lambs of good shape and make." The lambs were also "of excellent quality, bursting with meat, and yet not too fat." They made "splendid' butchers' meat." The second-best pen belonged to Southland, and the third to South Otago. Central Otago was highly commended.

Other districts in the competition were North and South Canterbury, Nelson, Marlborough, and North Otago. Each was represented by 15 pens of three lambs each. . The judges declared the entries to be "a very excellent collection of lambs as a whole, and. we-consider that they were well up to the high standard of previous years." . . •

"We had great difficulty in determining the best three pens in the whole exhibit as it will be appreciated that their selection from 150 pens of wellbred lambs of. a high standard is an extremely difficult undertaking," they added.

Commenting on the best district display, Southland's, they said that it was "a group of magnificent lambs, of ideal shape and make. They* were very even, of suitable weights, with short legs, thick shoulders, and good backs. They represented perfect butchers' meat."