VETERINARY ADVICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 August 1930, Page 8

VETERINARY ADVICE.

The decision of the Farmers? Union to endeavour to provide better facilities for veterinary advice and service in North Taranaki deserves the aid of stockowners generally. With lower prices anticipated, increased production is necessary if husbandry is to be a payable proposition. In the dairy industry at all events this will mean among other things a considerable capital outlay in the provision of better herds. Breeding by selection is now accepted as the only way to the establishment of higher producing cows, but while its wisdom has been established there seems to be the certainty that disorders of health and functions increase as.concentration upon type advances. To counteract or prevent the growth of these disorders is the work of the skilled veterinarian. Yet in North Taranaki, where the value of herds must be reckoned in t&rms of hundreds of thousands of pounds, there is not a single veterinary surgeon in private practice, and those who in the past have tried to establish themselves have been starved out. The fees charged by a private practitioner were considered too high for the class of stock which he was asked to attend, and more often than not, in the hope of a-voiding expense, the expert was not called in until his patient was too far gone for recovery to be possible. It is now proposed to make veterinary service available at a reasonable rate by a co-operative effort. A veterinary club is suggested, of which stockowners may become members on payment of an annual subscription. Though the payment from each farmer will be small, in the aggregate the fund so provided will be sufficient to make a fair salary for a veterinary surgeon. It will place members of the club in regard to veterinary services much in the same position as members of friendly societies in regard to medical attention. Fanners who join the proposed association will be entitled to free advice and attention for their live stock, and the proposed subscription would not be a heavy insurance premium to pay as an additional safeguard against the ravages of disease or the result of misadventure among dairy cattle, the value of which is likely to increase as special breeding becomes more general and its importance more widely recognised.