SHEEP DISEASES

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 10 March 1934, Page 7

SHEEP DISEASES

HEW ZEALANDER'S RESEARCH. IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND. The effects of a deficiency of calcium in the diet of pregnant and non-preg-nant sheep was one of the problems which Dr. M. C. Franklin, of Lincoln College, studied while occupying a postgraduate scholarship at Cambridge University. . As a result of his research work in. this direction- he has become rather critical of many of the results obtained by some workers on the problem of mineral deficiency. He told the Christchurch Times” that, as far as New Zealand was concerned, he doubted, if, there was any area where lack of lime or phosphate was the direct cause of some diseases.

Dr. Franklin, who is assistant-lecturer in the department of chemistry at Lin- * coin College, left New Zealand two years and a half ago to take up a science scholarship 1 for the study of animal physiology. He spent two years working at the Institute of Animal Pathology under Professor Bucks ton, and also held a Strathcona Research Exhibition at St. John’s College. During the last six months of his stay in Camibridge he was on the staff of the Institute of -Animal Pathology. The problems which he was investigating were a combination of animal nutrition research and bio-chemical investigations of animal diseases. Dr. Franklin was working with sheep all the time, and on' one occasion spent two weeks at the institute’s field' laboratory, where for the past three years research workers -have gone at lambing time to observe the diseases of sheep. Dr. Franklin considers that the standard of the agricultural’ research work carried! on in New Zealand compares very favourably with that in Great Britain. Although agricultural rasearch was conducted oh a more cxtemsTvo •scale iii England, New Zealand workers could hold their own with any others. ■While in- Great Britain, he visited a number of agricultural research insfi •tuUons, including the' Kothamsted Experimental Station, the o Agriculture's laboratory at Weybndge, and-the Rowett Research Institute in ’Aberdeen. • Before returning to New Zealand he visited the Nutrition Jnsri-J

tute and the Waite Agricultural Research Station in Adelaide, both of which Tie described as particularly fine places. Dr. Franklin said that both in. England , and Australia agricultural research was much better supported, by the public than it was in New Zealand. The laboratories at the Waite Agricultural Research Station’, for instance, had practically been 'built with money from bequests. In New Zealand, there was a tendency to leave everything to the Government, with the result that in lean times research could not bo carried out on.such an extensive scale as in other countries',