BOBBY CALVES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 18 September 1926, Page 6

BOBBY CALVES.

(To the Editor). Sir,—Your correspondent “Experienced Fanner,” seems, somewhat annoyed that his- little story about the fasting calf should lie doubted, when it is so, earnestly believed by himself, some nameless man lie happened to meet the other day, and! your Okaiawr, correspondent. With all due respect to the sincerity of these believers in your correspondent’s narratives, respeot must also be granted to the opinions of those

wlxo have not sufficient credulity to allow them to accept, as unquestionable facts, such physiological impossibilities. Let ‘ ‘Experienced Farmer” test his belief by tying up a newly-born calf and leaving it without food for ten days, and then see how l far it will be able to run. He will not require bounds to catch it. Most farmers have had experiences' with lost calves such as your correspondents refer to, but none but the unobservant and very credulous imagine that calves go without food. I do not .condemnI—or. 1 —or. as “Experienced Farmer” expresses it, ‘‘throw mud at” —the new venture which the l Pa tea company has inaugurated; but I, along with every humane and right-thinking farmer, condemn the present deplorably cruel methods adopted in .transporting the calves to the works. To my own personal knowledge calves have been carried in over-crowdedi lorries with the legs of unfortunate ones which happened to get down sticking out from the sides and backs of the lorries. And it may not ho generally known that in all eases proper trucks have rot, been provided for their carriage by rail, but just the ordinary trucks used. One can imiagine the pitiful plight of a calf which happened to he unfortunate enough to be trampled upon _by its mates in an open truck without a grated floor in weather such a; 5 } we arc experiencing at present, and, after arriving at the works being kept without food for thirty-six hours before being slaughtered. If the Paten company would inaugurate a system of crating the calves, transporting them by lorry’ direct to f he works, .and slaughtering them the day they arrived there, then the Pa tea freezing works could be congratulated: on their enterprise, and “mav the scheme move successful” would he the earnest wish of every SIMPLE COW-COOKIE. Hawera. Sept. Ifi.