SUPER-BEASTS ON THE FARM

Otago Witness, Issue 3595, 6 February 1923, Page 26

SUPER-BEASTS ON THE FARM

FOURFOOTED GIANTS WHICH WOULD HAVE ASTOUNDED OUR ANCESTORS. W alking about the pleasant woods and fields which comprise the largest pedigree pig-farm in the country (Mr S. F. Edge’s farm in Sussex), I was astonished at the size of the young pigs. They looked as if they intended to grow into elephants. The farmer told me that his pigs at eight months are as large as the pige of two years old a hundred years ago. “I can sell you a pig weighing 9001 b,” said Mr Edge. “And I could soon produce one weighing half a ton if you made it worth my while. But the aim of pigbreeders is rather to produce voung pigs of good weight than old ones of giant size. The public demand is for young meat, of pigs as of other animals. ' r —Mr Edge's Ideal. — This is one example of what stockbreeders have done of late years to rear large young animals on the farm. And what they have done in this matter, as in increasing the egg-laying qualities of chickens and the flow of milk from cows, would make our grandfathers cry out, like Dominie Sampson, “Pro-di-gi-ous!” The story is worth telling, ”if only to show what we might do to improve our human clock —if Cupid were not such a perverse little god ! .For he delights in shooting his derisive arrows at any banner that bears the strange device “Eugenics !” Mr Edge, our greatest authority on P>gs, and an expert on all stock, * gave me these points : “My ideal as a cattle-breeder is the largest possible animal at the youngest possible age. While my pigs gain their weight in lees than half the time taken by our grandfathers’ pigs, my cattle gain about one year in three over their ancestors. The limit of the weight of young animals is determined by the bones which have to spport their flesh. We must aim at fineness of hone since bones are not worth money. We aim at cutting down the age -when an animal reaches its prime. For it costs much less to fatten a young animal than to put extra fat on an old one. To grow the half-ton pig we should have to feed him for stalwart hone for some years before feeding him for flesh. The ideal pig would weigh a hundred pounds at a month old. Food and Heredity.— “All animals that are well fed tend to grow into giants. In fattening stock 1 reckon that 59 per cent, depends on food, the rest on heredity. It is our knowledge of scientific feeding which allows us to make bigger animals than our fathers dreamt about. I have a nineteenhundredweight cow and an ox weighinga ton. I could produce a two-ton beast if he were in demand. We make bigger animals than our fathers made, and we make them more perfectly. At Smithheld you can see cattle all so evenly beautiful that they might have been cast in moulds. To be a winner in a competition nowadays an animal must be without blemish. “As with pigs, so with sheep. They are ready for market at a much earlier age than in our father’s day. Lamb was rarely eaten then. Now old sheep are rarely kept for meat. The selling age is at about one year, whereas fifty years ago it would be at three years. “Then consider what has been done to improve chickens. The Indian jungle fowl, the parent stock of all the domestic races, lays about a dozen eggs in a season aiid is content. She has all the chicks she wishes to rear. To-day, egg-laying strains of hens do not seem to think of going ‘broody.’ It is as if they have no wish to hatch their eggs. We have White Wyandottes that lay over out) eggs in a year. The 3,C00-gallon Cow.— “The most marvellous advance has been made in milk production. Twenty years ago not many herds would yield an average of 400 gallons of milk per cow. But there are numbers of what we may call 2,000-gallon cows now in the country, and several 3,000-gallon cows. Milkproducing societies have records of herds with an average of over 800 gallons petcow. - “Whether the forcing of maturity, the cutting out of old age, is a sound policy I do not know. Nature’s way of keeping up a high standard is simply to the unfit, so that those survive that are fittest for the life to which they are called. The standard is high. In no one particular is man equal to selected animals —I mean in the way of strength, health, sight, hearing, touch, scent or fleetness in air, in water, or on- land. The Super-goldfinch.— “Thus, among wild birds, one goldfinch is much like another. Now and then the bird-trapper would catch a super-goldfinch, a giant among his fellows, with extra bright gold bars on his wings. By mating him with a sort of queen atnong finches, he has reared super-gold-finches, as supeijor to wild ones as they are to sparrows. But the wild superbird is likely to mate with an inferior hen, so bringing down the superlative to the average. And his fine feathers and form may be his undoing if a sparrow - hawk singles him out as a prize tit-bit. “I have no doubt that oy breeding and feeding we could produce a superman. The nation which first puts eugenics into practice should become dominant. But here we are on dangerous ground—it is best not to let our thought run far in this direction.”