The NORTHLAND FARMER

Northern Advocate, 23 July 1938, Page 13

The NORTHLAND FARMER

Preventing' Foot-aud-Moulh. The drastic measures that arc taken in England to prevent outbreaks oi fcot-and-mcuth disease arc indicated by a perusal of the Standstill Order imposing controlled area restrictions over the whole of England except the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland and Westmorland. The effect of the Standstill Order is briefly as fellows: —(a) Movement of animals out of the controlled area is prohibited except into

i A page prepared for the purpose of helping the Northland farmer to i make the utmost use of the remarkable advantages which Natu;e has w bestowed on Northland, and thereby 1 to develop the most fertile territory in New Zealand. i ' " '

an infected area contiguous to the controlled area. >b) Movement out of the controlled area to any other part of Great Britain is prohibited, to Move men! of animals into the controlled area from any free area in Great Britain to a farm for todays’ detention or to a slaughterhouse for slaughter wrhin 96 'hours is permitted by license only, id) Movement of animals within the controlled area is permitted for necessary purposes by license of the local authority of the receiving district. <e) Markets, sales and exhibitions of animals in, the controlled area are prohibited, except markets or sales of fat stock for immediate slaughter, and then only by license of the local authority and subject to veterinary inspection. Animals exposed at markets and sales so licensed may only he moved from there to slaughterhouses for slaughter or back to the premises whence they came for detention thereon for six days, (f) The Order prohibits the hunting of .deer In any part of the controlled area.

i A - ■ ’. Edited By C. E. Cuming

How Insects Spread Disease. There are three ways in which insects may become carriers of disease. First of all, the insect itself may become infected. Mosquitoes, for instance, must themselves become infected with malaria before they can transmit the disease. The malarial parasite, moreover, must spend a certain period of its life in the blood of a mosquito before it can continue its development, so that elimination of mosquitoes means the elimination of malaria, as well as the removal of an annoying social irritant. In the second class the insect does not itself become infected with the disease organism, but carries it either inside or outside its body. Typhoid fever falls into: this class. It is contracted by swallowing organisms in infected food or drink, and the infection leaves the body by the intestines. In the third case, the insect itself is responsible for the disease. The condition known as scabies is due to a tiny insect which burrows into the skin, where it lives and raises a numerous progeny. It will be thus seen that the danger of livestock contracting disease through the agency of insects is one that cannot be lightly ignored. Stagnant water around the milking shed is always a potential source of danger, for this provides an ideal breeding ground for all manner of insects. Cleanliness in the shed itself is another means of ensuring freedom from insects that may carry disease to the stock. Continuous Testing Imperative. No farmer can afford to milk in the dark. When high prices ruled, unprofitable cows could be fed and milked, and losses from disease could be pul up with. Testing every year, so that the full history of every cow and every calf may be known, is absolutely necessary if the best returns are to be secured. A thing to boar in mind is that with every year the value or. successive records will be increased. It will be the cows boasting of a good record for every year of their producing life whose stock will command the big money. To give continuous heavy production and to have a calf every year is the proof of constitution and disease-resisting power the farmer of the future will demand. Research workers on dairy cattle disease are showing—and practical local experience supports the view—that the worst diseases of dairy cattle arc largely hereditary, and the best evi-

dence that a cow has never had abortion or mammitis (in a serious form at least) is the unbroken succession of records, Herd-testing figures in the coming years will give the true ht'story of a cow from a producing as well os from a disease resistant viewpoint, but only where the cow has been tested every year. Just as the continuous story that testing can provide will discover the most valuable breeding cows in the country, so the ( herd-testing movement will divide farmers into* two camps—one for the successful and one for the unsuccessful. Disease Resistance Inherited. Important information from America strengthens the case- for only using sires which are the progeny of cows that have proved by a long succession of annual tests that they possess natural power of resistance to disease. The American case is the report of a scientific investigation into the reason why some cows are resistant to contagious abortion. The investigation showed that resistance is a definitely inherited characteristic. Examination of the blood of cows that resisted abortion showed that they had high powers of resistance —or. as the investigators themselves put it —the blood had high killing power, while the blood of cows which aborted when exposed to infection had invariably little or no killing power. The bactericidal power of the resistant cows was so great that one cubic entimenter of her blood (about onethousandth of a quart) killed 8000 abortus organisms. All the evidence went to show that the killing power of the blood was “a specific and definite phenomenon.” If further research work proves this interesting American investigation to be correct a certain means of controlling abortion is at the farmer’s command. There are cows in many a New Zealand herd that have given satisfactory production over a long series of years, qp to 15 years, and have bred regularly every year. These are the cows to breed from, and in the case of pedigrees the only cows to be chosen as matrons of a herd sire.

Liming Imperative. The value of lime in our soils cannot be over-emphasised. It is neces-J sary for both clay and volcanic soils, but to the former its use is imperative. Apart altogether from its known desirable effect of breaking down clay soils and, with the aid of humus, con- j verting these from a harsh intractable j medium for plant life into one of the most valuable soils of the country, j while having the opposite effect on i sands and volcanic soils of binding the soil together, there is the great value of lime in making plant food more available. But there is another advantage of lime which is not. sufficiently appreciated. In the absence of lime, a soil is sour, and sourness in the soil is not only undesirable foxplant life but makes the soil condition unfavourable for bacterial activity, and the first objective of the farmer should bo to provide the ideal condition in his soil for the healthy development of desirable bacteria. Only when the right bacteria arc vigox’ously active is the mineral food in the soil made fully available to the plant, and only then can the plant provide the well-mineralised food fox the animal. Lime is not only necessary for the soil, it is necessary for the plant and for the animal. Again, an ample supply of lime in the soil is the best insurance against disease. Generally Inadequate. Not only is the use of lime sometimes neglected altogether, but where it is used the amount applied is quite often inadequate. At Rothamsted Ex- | perimental Farm in England, where ! exhaustive experiments have been conducted to ascertain the amount of lime leached from the soil, it has been found that the average loss is"8001b of lime per acre per annum on aiable land but rather less on grassland. Very similar results were obtained in American experiments. This amount would be returned to the soil in 15 cwt of ordinary ground limestone as usually used in this country. On the day lands, a ton of lime to the acre should be the initial dressing and at lead quarter of a ton a yeax «fter that. It is not only the leaching that 1 has to be made good. A yield of, say, 75001 b of 4 per cent, milk in a year, or 3001 b of butterfat, contains 131 b of lime, But to give this in the milk a cow would take double the amount from the soil. This means that a cow giving the above production would [ take from the soil 201 b of lime, or 461 b of carbonate of lime. Then there is the lime required for the skeleton of the calf. In view of these facts, where is the farmer who neglects lime going to finish? He certainly is not going to get maximum production from his herd or rear vigorous calves, while he is definitely inviting disease.