Stud Cattle Breeders’ Page.

Southland Times, Issue 20496, 26 May 1928, Page 15 (Supplement)

Stud Cattle Breeders’ Page.

JERSEY’S GREAT RECORD lambmortality.

BETTER HERDS. IMPROVEMENT DESIRED. REQUESTS TO BE MADE TO GOVERNMENT. Shortly the New Zealand Farmers’ Union and the Royal Show Association intend to make further overtures to the Government in an endeavour to obtain legislation to deal with the improvement of the Dominion’s dairy herds. The two bodies desire registration of the “scrub” bulls in the country on the lines of the South Australian Dairy Cattle Improvement Act, which is designed to help farmers to buy pure-bred bulls which provides for a levy of 10s per bull to be paid each year as a registration fee, the money to be pooled and form the basis of a fund from wh<:h the Government subsidies purchase of pure-bred bulls. In South Australia the amount of subsidy granted to purchasers is 60 per cent, of the purchase price, and the limit is £3O. Bulls purchased must not be less than 10 months old, and not more than five years old, must have passed a tuberculin test by the Government officer within six months preceding the sale, must be the progeny of a dam which, under official test, has reached the 501 b butter-fat- standard in any condition satisfactory to the Department of Agriculture. On the basis of the 58,000 bulls of two years and over in the Dominion, jt is estimated that there are in all 65,000 bulls of six months and over in New Zealand. Legislation based on the South Australian Act, it is estimated by the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, would provide a sum of £32,300, or, after deducting administrative expenses £30,000 annually for the subsidising of purchasing of pure-bred bulls. Assuming that the average price of bulls bought would be 36gns, the subsidy would provide bulls in place of the present “scrubs,” and would, in ten years, make a vast difference to the Dominion’s dairy herds. QUESTION OF BREEDING. IN OR OUT OF FASHION. Reviewing the great cattle shows and sales of recent weeks, one might put the question:—“Are breeders as a body swaying towards undue refinement in the heads of their male animals of the AberdeenAngus and Shorthorn breeds?” (says the North British Agriculturist). Once upon a time the blackskin bulls were sometimes unduly “strong” in heads, or lacking in elegance of cut and high-class distinction. Then there was a period when the ears were set too low on the heads. Young Viscount was accountable for much of the “half-mast” setting of ears, great bull though he was in main essentials. Of late years the distinct fault in a good many blue-blooded bulls has been undue length of face. At odd times the faces have been rather narrow between the eyes but the principal faults have been excessive length from eye to nose, and a small jaw. A good-sized nose and substantial under jaw look well in a bull, but in these days one finds too many bulls of the all-conquer-ing blacks and red-and-white-and-roan somewhat poorly provided with turnip-crushing apparatus.

The evident reform lies in shortening the distance from eye to nose. Then the jaws themselves will strengthen practically automatically. The Aberdeen-Angus heads ought to be far on the way towards perfection at this time of day. Some are undoubtedly beautiful and correct in balance, but too many are wrong in formation—either ungainly above, .or, as has already been noted too long below.

As for colours we might devote more attention to the production of soft brown-ish-black in our Aberdeen,* .Yngus cattle. There could be few colour cries more mischievous than the bygone American one of “Black, all black, and no surrender,” especially when backed by money and ignorance. The old mousey-brown in calves, with grey on udder or scrotum, and white hairs in the tail, finished best, the body colour never reaching inky black, which usually goes with unkindly handlig. In the Shorthorn sphere the tope of heads are much improved as a rule. Certainly the horns are a great deal more attractive looking but how much of this is due to artistry in training one had better refrain from considering. The shades of red and roan have gone to excess, however, in raising or lowering of prices. As for the commercial devastation caused by white socks or “stockings” it makes one pause. At one time yellowish-red and red-and-white were common and duly respected in Shorthorns. It was never whispered that animals of those hues were bad doers in any sense. But by degrees there was a striving for blood red, and the socks and stockings were scowled upon by the chasers of fashion. Trouble dogged the steps of the seekers after red blood. The shades sometimes swayed towards the inordinately dark, with a tendency to black around the muzzle and in the tail. There was also a suspicion that unkindly feeding properties came with the blackish hair. Then again the body colour might be right, but a gingery tinge appeared on the head. In modern times the free use of white bulls has improved the roans, and has also put a degree of richness into the reds. Our best reds at the present time are not far removed from white. But, after all, there is a phase of the ridiculous in this excess worship of colour. If yellowish red, red with white legs, or splashy roan, were associated with poor milking or dour feeding, one could see the force of a form of colour boycott. When we get down to the American “brass tacks” —whatever they may be —we find plenty of goodness among the unfashionable colours, and some badness arrayed like Solomon. The gentle presumption is that we live in a queer world, and that keeping out of the fashion is a very expensive game. CARE OF HEIFERS. Although it is true that the most important period in the life of a dairy cow is the first six months of ’ her calf-hood, this does not mean that she can be neglected between the age of six months and freshening. Under-size and under-development generally can usually be traced to underfeeding during the heifer stage; and it is an axiom of good dairying that the most productive cows are the ones that have grown to their full capacity. Every calf is born with certain inherent and inherited possibilities, says a writer in the Farmers’ Advocate. Her breeding determines the extent of her possible production and profits for her owner, but her feeding and care determines the extent to which these possibilities will be developed. This is the reason why, when certain dairy farmers get hold of heifers that have been unfed, they can make them more profitable than they have been previously; but even the most expert feeding and care cannot make up for all the lost opportunities that occurred during calfhood and heiferhood.

Salford has stopped the advertisement of greyhound races on the backs of tram tickets.

JERSEY’S GREAT RECORD. 305 DAYS’ TEST. PRODUCTION TOTALS 812 LBS FAT. Advices from America show that the popularity of the 305 days test, is relegating the 365 days test to the list of “has beens”. In North Carolina U.S.A., a 14 years old cow has shattered the previous highest record for cows over the age of 12 years. The newcomer to the list of world champions in the 305 days class is Neobule’s Lady sth, a remarkable old cow that is owned and was bred and tested by Mr R. L. Shuford of Newton N. C. Lady sth was placed on test when she was 14 years 2 months old, and at the end of 305 days she had made a record of 812.31 lbs fat and 14,7371 be milk. This new record for cows over 12 years of age is 711bs higher than the record of Killingly Nora which held this worlds championship with her record of 7411bs fat. Lady sth also established a world record for milk production in this test. Her yield througout the ten months was consistently high rather than spectacular. It was above 73 lbs fat in every complete month of the test and it exceeded the 801bs mark for five successive months. Her milk averaged 5.84 per cent fat for the test. She has already won a gold medal and she has three other very good records to her credit. As a seven years old cow she produced 4471bs fat. At 11 years she won a gold medal for producing 7631bs fat. And in her 12th year she yielded 8891bs fat. Neobule’s Lady sth is a daughter of Emin ents Flying Fox, a son of Eminent and a grandson of Golden Ferns Lad. Eminents Flying Fox is, of course, a grandson of Champion Flying Fox. Although Neobule’s Lady sth is now past 15 years of age she shows no ill effects from her long and strenuous life as a high producing cow. From her appearance one would guess that her age was nearer 10 years than 15 years. Undoubtedly 8121bs of fat is a grand record for a cow for a natural milking period of ten months, especially at the age of 14 years, and is evidence of the persistency of the Jersey cow. LAMB MORTALITY. A SERIOUS TROUBLE. THE CAUSES DISCUSSED. SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT. (Written for the Southland Times.) “Lambs dying without any sufficient reason or seeming cause—best lambs in the flock—fat, quite fat, freezers every one—mortality rate frightful!” These remarks are heard on every side. Farmers’ Unions throughout the Dominion have discussed the question and farmers and pastoralists are much perturbed. Some despondent ones even suggest referring the whole question to the League of Nations for that wise constitution’s consideration. So, it seems, is this serious subject tossed about from pillar to post by the Press and public, while those most vitally interested seem the least able to give any ordered or logical explanation why the lambs are dying at the wrong time. Renal congestion, over-feeding of the mothers and want of exercise is the cause say the experts! The farmers, or many of them, are standing by, some possibly helplessly so, seeing their lambs dying day by day before their eyes and can give no reason for the trouble. Honestly what is the public to think of the farmer’s intelligence, or 'indeed of the commonsense of the experts, who are merely content to seek the trail of the ancient calf. We have had a free system of education in this country for well nigh on half a century and it seems pitiful to think that we are afraid to face the truth.

In this enlightened age gross mismanagement or ignorance should be no excuse for what is happening. Farmers are not all ignorant of the laws of health by any means. Many there are, may be, who have never given the question any thought, but surely all will admit that Nature’s laws must ever override customs and methods of feeding domesticated animals prescribed by man. So far as science knows, the laws of health are fundamental, and whether those laws are violated by the individual or vitiated by man matters little—the consequences are much the same in the long run. The health of our domestic animals is of vital importance to the race. Who can doubt it? On the health of the dairy cow, for instance, depends the purity and wholesomeness ’of her milk. When dairy cows are improperly or insufficiently fed—stall fed—their milk is not pure or is their butter too good.

Mr H. V. Coverdale, one time of Auckland, later of St. James’ Hospital, London, says on this subject—“ While most foodstuffs have been dealt with by the British analysts, butter seems to have been passed over by them. It is, I believe, a fact that New Zealand is the only country in the world that goes into manufacturing butter on a large scale where the cows are fed all the year round on grass . . this is of great importance . . . grass is the principal source of the vitamines. It is now known to some scientists that the milk and butter obtained from the milk of stall-fed cows contains only a small percentage of vitamines of health and that rats ‘ fed on the products fed to stall-fed cows fall sick, develop rickets and die.” Researches carried out on the products of stall-fed cows prove the truth of this. What effect must such milk have upon the young animal or the human child? I should like to emphasize this question as the importance of it will appear later on. Fortunately we now know what a dreacted “carrier” of disease producing germs milk is, and what a trail of death follow in the wake of impure milk when used as a food for children, and surely it is not too much to postulate the possibility of animals directly infecting their offspring. We know that this is not only possible, but a pathological fact that mothers can, and do, pass on to their offspring diseases to which they are immune themselves, which may mean death or long-lingering sickness and later on, should they live, a weakened constitution. In the crucible of human experience man is learning many things, and as Henry Clay said, “He is learning to read the past and to understand something of the future.” Visualize, if you can, ancient man wandering over the open spaces of the world tending his flocks and herds and picture the cribbed and confined conditions under which he tends his flocks and herds to-day. Remember too, that the minerals so necessary to build up the bodily structure of an animal must be obtained from the food it eats, the water it drinks, or the air it breathes, and you may begin to understand something of the problem 'involved. Animals living in a state of nature are better able to obtain these than they are under domestication. In a sense man has constituted himself the wet nurse of his domestic brood. Stock, when shepherded or only confined in large station paddocks, are much more likely to be able to supply themselves with the food most suited to their taste than is the farmer or pastoralist under present restricted conditions.

The artificial food and pasture on which the farmers of to-day feed their domesticated animals may be supplied in abundance, may be clean and good, but for all that mav not be health-giving to the ani-

mals. There may be always something lacking in the food supplied or something added that may be actually injurious to the animal’s health. As the mineral content of a soil is as varied and complex as the geological formation on which it rests, we should expect that the botany of a district,’or a country, would vary as widely as the composition and properties of the soil, and we find that to be so. The variations in the mineral contents of the soil in New Zealand is very arresting, and should be of interest to the farmers. One of the immediate consequences of this variation is that the composition of the water in the creeks, rivers and streams of the country vary in the mineral content held in solution, and this in turn affects the mineral content of. x the grasses and cereals, shrubs and trees growing in the soil.

The theory propounded by the ~ great French chemist Dumas teaches that each plant has a dominant mineral food factor that is needed to ensure full development and perfection. This applies to animals also. Where are the shepherds who have not noticed and maybe wondered at the peculiar habit of their flocks, hungry, or may be half-starving, when put on fresh clean pasture, they are not content to just eat the clean lush feed around them as other hungry animals do. No, they pick a bite here, a few blades further on, running to this flower or to that, deliberately going out of their path, as some shrub or herb or so-called weed catches their eye to sample it! When this strange dissatisfied feeding habit of the sheep is considered it must surely set the ordinary person thinking—wondering why his flock seems ever so discontented with the best kind of artificial food his experience and wisdom can give them?

We do not know for obvious reasons when man first started to domesticate the wiki sheep. We do know, however, that flocks of sheep wandered over the plains of India and slacked their thirst in the waters of the Jumna and the Ganges in the early part of the pliocene age and that the bones of their remote ancestors have been found in the Norfolk forest-beds—a deposit formed half a million years ago, and we do not clearly know whether we are to look on the Mouflons of Corsica or the Urials of' Asia. Ovis Amnion Poli—found to-day running wild in the high tablelands of the Himalayas —or the Tarbury—peat sheep as the ancestors of our domestic flocks. It is sufficient to stress the fact that the Ovis family belong to the mountainous regions of the earth where feed is often scattered and not only scarce and varied in quality and mineral content, but often covered with snow. 'ln summer and spring the mountain animals are fat and sleek and in winter lean and scraggy. It is only natural that it should be so. Alternations of climatic conditions in such localities, and going on for long ages, has evolved many striking among the Ovis family.

Some of these characteristics are and have been so persistent as to be able to affect the health and even life of individual where attempts have been made to suppress or greatly modify them. Environmental influences may do much to modify or deepen inherited characteristics, but the good factor is undoubtedly the dominating element controlling the vital processes of life. As it is with plant life so it is with animal life. One thing, however, is certain, viz., that the healthy development of the various forms of life is dependent on a favourable environment and a sufficient food supply. Lip unfolding is like the unwinding of an endless picture film—our imagination is captured as our intelligence is arrested. What shepherd but has not watched the yound lambs of his flock running, jumping and sporting round and over and down the most dangerous and inaccessible places on the farm. How few people realize that it is but the reflex of a long-inherited characteristic habit of their far-off ancestors, on whose agility, surety and quickness of motion to evade their natural and life-long enemies depended their daily, even hourly existence. It is only when we realize how deeply imprinted on the conscious life of their ancestors must such habits have been to recur anew in successive remote descendants, that we begin to understand how much more deeply persistent must be vital biological ones. If an organism is endowed with capacity or power, capable of recording impressions or habits of long dead ancestors on the film of its embryonic life, how much more profound, then, must be the impress of vital processes on the life of such an organism. It may be, as some bio-chemists assert, that all life is but the manifestation of an ever ending series of changes, brought about by the action and reaction of matter and that form, as well as the varied functions of the individual life, is dependent on the changes. In the absence of some needed element, or some complex substance, or in consequence of some unsuitable substance getting mixed up in the internal economy of the organism, disease appears, life fades and death results. The beautiful complex thing we call life—a . living being—is no more. To enjoy good health it is just as necessary that an animal should have healthy blood as it is for the human. To have a supply of healthy blood good that is a sufficient food, good water and a suitable environment are necessary. The blood stream of an animal that is constantly being poisoned, and in a chronic condition of impurity, through unsuitable or impure food or bad water, is certain to contract disease soon or late. Now, if We may reasonably conclude, and I think we may, that a large percentage of the ills and diseases from which the human race suffer are brought about as a direct result of the violation of some one of the natural laws, as unsuitable food, filthy habits or unfavourable surroundings, may we not, reasoning from analogy, assume that many of the diseases from which our domestic animals suffer spring from somewhat similar causes? I think we may. Evidence seems overwhelming in favour of the inference anyhow. That disease, weakness and ultimately death follow as a consequence, to both human and animal life, if unsuitable food is persisted in sufficiently long, and no relief found to counteract its effects, is an indubitable fact. But what shall we say of the thousands of young sheep, lambs and hoggets that die annually in both South and North Islands through ignorance and gross mismanagement. One always feels a certain amount of sympathy for simple ignorance and those who suffer through ignorance deserve help and assistance and instruction, but where gross and culpable mismanagement is glaringly in evidence, and when' the owners are perfectly well aware of what is going on, such people deserve no sympathy. Rather they should draw down on their heads the condemnation of the community.

(To be Continued.)