BREEDING ARTIFICIALLY,

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 May 1944, Page 6

BREEDING ARTIFICIALLY,

A BRITISH EXPERIMENT. LONDON, February 28. Aragon Hecuba, a Guernsey calf born four weeks ago, is one ol the first batch of calves in Britain to be bred by artificial insemination. Her father, a prize Guernsey bull, never saw her mother. Since the Reading centre for artificial insemination of dairy cattle was established a year ago, its prize bull has sired indirectly 10 times as manv calves as normally, and cattle experts who are watching Hecuba’s progress daily, expect such artificial breeding io start a revolution in British farming. Under the new method, working farmers will not keep their own bulls, but will be able to telephone the artificial insemination centre. Within a few hours a veterinary expert will visit the farm, and the farmer will be certain that bis nextseason’s calves will be of improved type. Dairy farmers throughout the. country are following with interest the Reading research because prizebulls have been changing hands for 4000 guineas, and working farmers cannot afford to buy them. The Reading centre offers them the service of a prize bull for .£l. Dr. Stephen Bartlett, who is conducting the experiments, expresses the belief that Britain and most European countries will use the artificial insemination system after the war. “There is. however, a limit to the results obtainable by this method of breeding,” he says. “The very best herds' will not give good results they are mismanaged, and there is far too much mismanagement. It impossible to get a good average of milk production—-about 800 gallons a year from one cow—but very difficult to go above that average.