IMPROVEMENT OF FARM CATTLE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 6

IMPROVEMENT OF FARM CATTLE.

The best daily cow is that which can turn the greatest proportion of her food to milk production, can breed desirable calves for either the dairy or grazing purposes, and when her services at the pail are over can put on flesh rapidly and evenly. When it is considered) that a valuable beast eats no more than a mongrel one, and that, in fact, is less dainty in its appetite than the other, and that it will thrive well on common food, on which tlie mongrel will make no advance whatever, the misfortune, when the farmer can keep only the worst kinds of stock, becomes very apparent, and the loss from this source must be very great indeed.

The first and most essential point in oattle husbandry is breeding, for without good judgment in breading no extent of care and feeding Trill bring profitable results. A speaker at an Old Farmers' Institute, in England, said — The successful breeder has something more to do than merely to effect the coupling of one animal

with another, but to rightly fulfil the functions of his calling he must &o mate animal with animal as to pioduce the best results possible. Thtie are living organisms entrusted to his jaiv and guidance, living organisms from which, according to the natural laws of propagation, he is to produce other organisms which will be superior in general merit to their ancestors, and by a skilful manipulation of Llrcumstances and environment tau&e good qualities to replace those of inferiority in their progenitors. Robeit Bakewell, after the experience of a lifetime, declared that animals ars like wax, and, in the hands of the breeder, can be fashioned to suit his tastes. Charles Darwin, undoubted^- the world's most celebrated naturalist, says in his work on "The Origin of Species," volume 1, page 8 : "'No case is oh record of a variable species ceasing to vary under cultivation." Here is the work of the successful breeder, to mould., as his piactical experience detects them, the small variations into practical and profitable realities. Our oldest cultivated plants, such as wheat, still yield new varieties. Our oldest domestimated animals are still capable of rapid improvement or modification.

So much has been written by way of pieface, with the view to impress the undi2rstanding upon farmers that they may effect the improvement of their cattle stocks mare rapidly and with greater certainty than they suppose. It has been well said that "the bull is half the herd.' 1 And so he is ; therefore it is to the choice of sires for use from which any improvement can be expected. Then must follow selection and retention of the best only of the female progeny for breeding purposes, and opportunity should be taken of adding to the herd, if only one at a time, as funds permit, a conspicuously superior cow. It is all-essential that those numerous farmers who have ordinary dairy herds should rear their calves for 'graziers, instead of sacrificing them for veal or sausage meat when only a week or a fortnight old, and it would be only practicable for them to do this by siring their calves by i>edigree bulls. Graziers would be glad to make it worth their while to do this if they employed pedigree bulls, but not otherwise. At "the shows in the Home Country there is an ever-increasing demand for bulls — shorthorns especially suitable for getting milking stock. Ihe shorthorn is in eveiy sense a thorough dual-purpose bre-edi .n every country, and neither the heat of the tropics nor the cold of the extreme north has proved too much for its constitution, neither impairing its milk-yieldilng or beefproducing qualities. Recently in England one of the most successful sales of the year, according to the reports in the agricultural journals, was that of the herd of cheap milking shorthorns, the property of Mr Benjamin Read, of Keynsham, near Bristol. The history of the herd is so instructive, as showing how a tenant fanner may possess Lim?elf of a valuable herd, we quote some particulars of Mr Read's. "One of the most successful shorthorn sales of the year was that of Mr Benjamin Read's herd, held on the 28i'h of last September, at Keynsham, near Bristol, and if we seek to know the cause of this being an extraordinarily good sole, it will be found in the deep milking character of its tribes, a character for which it has been in. repute ever since the owner has had it in band. The history of the herd is important, as it affords an instructive lesson^ Mr Read's father had collected a herd at remaikably good dairy cows, of bhorthorn charactov, but devoid of pedigree. So famous was it that at his decease in 1888, when it was dispersed by public auction, the cows averaged £26 5s each. The present M_r Read "determined to secure a few of his father's most famous milkers, with the object of mating them with suitable pedigree bulls, for the creation of entirely new tribes of dairy pedigree shorthorns. Others had succeeded before in doing this, and no one more so than Mr ' Read's neighbour, Mr G. F. King. The highest success resulted. The matrons being of large seal© and well-shaped, and Stratton bulls being employed, the progenj r , after becoming eligible for herd-book registry, won numerous prizes at the local shows, and the young bulls made good prices at Birmingham. The exercise of skill and good judgment for nine years had brought"" the herd to a high state of perfection, when. Mr Read had a sudden 'pull up' to cut short his enterprise. The entire Chewton. estate, which included his farm, was sold, piecemeal, and he had to quit a farm which had been in the occupancy of the family more than 120 years. This necessitated the dispersal of the herd, which was done on the occasion referred to, when 57 cows, heifers, and bulls came under Mr Thornton's sandglass."'

Of these a large proportion belonged to the new tribes, and as the whole of the others had been bought and bredi entirely because they came from highly-reputed deepmilking tribes, the bidding at the auction was very spirited, and an average of £38 Is was realised for 50 females ; an average in excess of that made for some time past at sales of scanty-milking, long-pedigree shorthorns. Let us see, however, what the principal new tribes created by Mr Read averaged. There were three — the Nora, Fancy, and Jenny. Ten cows and heifers of the former, including their calves, averaged £45 19s 9di. The same number of Fancy s, with their calves, averaged £32 13s Id The Jennys were fewer, but one of them realised the' highest price of the sale, which was 86gs. The lesson, then, is a very potent one. Of course- those who go in for this sort of enterprise have two rules to go by, which should be invariably observed. Only the very best cows ought to be employed as foundation sioek, and, in the second

place, the hull to which they are mated should be of a deep-milking stock, otherwise the progeny might' fail in this important, property. In the progress of shorthorn breeding some years since, both the Bates and Booth men cared nothing for the milking properties of the animals they bred. Ifc was not so at the first, no one having Keen more particular about milk than Thomas Bates, hut in the' fifties and sixties it was common to find) fashionable cows and heifers yielding calves and their udder* not yielding sufficient milk to rear them. In fact, nurse cows were at one time a sine qua non in every high-class herd.