DAIRY HERD CULLS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4189, 26 May 1939, Page 3

DAIRY HERD CULLS

RECORD BONER KILLINGS. DUE TO FEED SHORTAGE. Marching to their slaughter, thousands on thousands of cattle have been pouring into the freezing works all over the Auckland Province in the past three months. Owing to exceptionally heavy culling- of dairy herds, the numbers killed for export,, as boner beef have reached record proportions during this period. . . . Apparently an endless stream of them has been going through the freezing works. Dry weather has been the main cause, while the tendency for farmers to keep more and more young stock and cull the old has been partly responsible. Dairymen have been very short of feed during the dry months and although the pastures all over the province are now looking greener, there is not a great quantity of feed available. Supplies of hay are short, and auxiliary fodder such as crushed oats, bran and pollard, is dear. Therefore, a cow must be worth its salt, or else out it goes, first to the slaughterboard and then to England. Feed must be conserved to sec the good cattle through the winter. The same sights were seen at the Auckland freezing works at Westfield and Southdown, at Moerewa in the Far Narth, and Horotiu down the south line. Paddocks were filled with these “boners” waiting- their, turn on the slaughter-hoard and inside the works the chain gangs were busy, killing, skinning and cutting up the beasts. REJECTS “DOWN THE CHUTE.” The army of doomed cattle was not an inspiring sight as many were old and thin, and rejects at the works ihroug-h disease or emaciation accounted for a large number, The rejects go “down the chute” to the manure department attached to the freezing works, whence they go back to the land in the shape of fertiliser. “Boners,” of course, are inferior cattle, mainly old dairy cows, which are not up to the standard of export frozen beef. Some idea of the quantity going through the works is g-iven by the Meat Board’s returns of shipments. Up to the end of April, from the beginning of the current season on October Ist, there were 220,191 bags of this class of beef shipped abroar.d, nearly all to British ports, compared with 159,026 bags in the same period last season. Most of it goes to canning factories in the United Kingdom to make the “bully beef” of Army fame, potted pastes, and a variety of other products. EFFECT NEXT SEASON. The suggestion that this heavy culling would result in dairy herds being smaller next season was deprecated by stock experts. The feed shortage resulted m culling being done with, a rush instead of being spread over the winter months. Al-.

though killing of dairy culls was heavier than ever before during March, April and May, this would be offset by fewer killings later on. Many farmers, however, arc holding less stock over the winter, and intended to build them up in the spring by buying in-calf heifers. If there is a flush of feed in the spring demand for heifers is therefore expected lo be seen.