SAVING CALVES FOR HERDS

Southland Times, Issue 24165, 29 June 1940, Page 12

SAVING CALVES FOR HERDS

Effort To Increase Production CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED IN WAIKATO A calf-saving campaign has been launched by Mr R. A. Candy, of Ngarua, chairman of the Auckland Herd-Testing Association. Mr Candy urges that instead of selling all the progeny of their herds to the bobby calf trade, farmers should save all their heifer calves and rear them in order to increase the production of butter and cheese.

It is also intended to exchange the heifer calves from those of the highproducing herds for those from lowproducing herds.

Tire support of dairy companies has been sought in order to facilitate the exchange system. The New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company, Limited, and the New Zealand Co-operative' Pig Marketing Association have undertaken to support the project, while the Auckland Herd Improvement Association has intimated that it will assist farmers wanting calves to secure their requirements. The prices will be based on bobby calf realizations.

An appeal to farmers to assist in the scheme of herd replacement by rearing calves which would otherwise be sold as bobby calves is made by the Te Awamutu Co-operative Dairy Company, Limited, in a circular letter to suppliers this month. Farmers are asked to fill in forms stating if they are willing either to sell calves for herd replacement purposes at bobby calf prices or to buy calves. • “The Herd Recording Council of the New Zealand Dairy Board estimates that there are 50,000 less cows in milk in the dairy herds of this country than there were last season,” states the circular. “They express the fear that this decrease will continue, whereas it is imperative that we increase our exports of primary produce and so assist in making up the deficiency of 200,000 tons which Britain previously imported annually from Baltic countries. “Attention is drawn to the great economic wastage which takes place in New Zealand each year through the killing of bobby calves coming from herds with good butter-fat production. If these calves, or a proportion of them, could be reared for herd replacements, there would be an increase in the average butter-fat production a cow.”