Pig Clubs’ Section

Northern Advocate, 13 May 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

Pig Clubs’ Section

Very few farmers like keeping records. To many people in town and in administrative offices, to whom the importance of records is so great and so indispensible, this antipathy is difficult to understand. One only needs to have been a farmer to appreciate the/reason ior this reluctance to keep records. It is certainly not an economic reason. It is purely a psychological one. After a hard day’s toil on the farm, the average working farmer is not in a fit state to sit down and write diaries and keep accurate records. As a general rule, a New Zealand farmer is doing the work 'of at least two or three men, and it is always a case of leaving out something. Work with the spade and shovel or handling the plough or milking cows makes it difficult to handle a pen, or these two reasons are quite sufficient to account for the lack of records on most farms.

' While no amount of talking, writing or persuading will result in any vast number of farmers doing this work, it is'nevertheless advisable from time to 'time to point out the necessity of /keeping records so that a few more will do so, and the number of accurate records of farm production increase to the point where some definite information of value to the farming com-

Advantage Of Recording

munity in general, and those who keep them in particular, will accrue. Value of Records If a farmer who keeps accurate records achieves certain definite results that can be tabulated for the purpose of proving certain things, the fact that his neighbours do not keep records does not mater so much provided that, if the farmer’s results prove themselves, they follow his practical farm system, and adopt his methods. That is probably the most that can be expected until such time as the amount of work done by farmers is so reduced by increased labour on the farm that there will be ample time to attend to this really essential part of the administration of a property.

One is, of course, inclined at the moment to view the dawning of such a day as the daybreak in a pure dream, because the tendency nowadays is towards increased rather than decreased labour difficulties. Until the fundamental difficulty is removed, no great headway can be made.

Amongst the records that a farmer should keep are dates of service of his farm animals and the dates when the young may be expected, and records of production of his various animals. There is no need to remark on herd