BRUISED PIGS

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1933, Page 22 (Supplement)

BRUISED PIGS

NEED FOR CAREFUL HANDLING.

CONSIDERABLE NATIONAL LOSS.

(By

“Tainui.”)

The need for the careful handling of porkers is stressed by the chairman of the New Zealand Co-operative Pig Marketing Association in his annual report. He states that the loss resulting to producers and the Dominion from the rough handling of porker pigs is very considerable, and is daily increasing. Tire skin of the porker is remarkably sensitive, and the number of times a porker has been hit or bruised is plainly advertised to the world when the dressed carcase is hung up to be graded at this end or to be sold in London. One often sees good pork carcases hung up for grading in the freezing works absolutely disfigured by red weal marks, telling the grader just how the pig has been treated when alive. The nature of the marks indicates the cause The many weals across the skin (generally on the most valuable parts, the hams and the loin) indicate that the pig has been urged along with a stick. The marks along the side suggest injury from barb wire; while the bruises suggest that the pig has been actually kicked or that it was knocked about by reason of rough driving in half-empty lorries or by bad shunting of a careless engine-driver- of a train. Every mark and bruise shows to the grader and buyer when the dressed carcase is hung up for inspection. The market demands a white-skinned pig, and the white skin advertises, often in exaggerated form, every hand-touch to the skin of the live pig. The marks do not show up to the same extent on the bacon carcase after it has been singed and dressed (though bruising of bacon carcases has been seriously complained of by British buyers), but the disfigurement of the porker carcase, by marks, is absolute and is seriously detrimental. In catering to a critical overseas market, appearance is of the greatest importance, and anything that seriously detracts from good appearance places the product in a lower grade, with a resultant lower price. Too high a percentage of our porker carcases are disfigured as the result of careless or rough handling, and a good proportion of these are graded down in consequence. In the majority of cases, the disfiguring marks are due to careless handling or management, few farmers probably realising the delicate nature of the pigs’s skin, and that the use of a stick, used however lightly, will leave a mark that will remain, and finally cause the carcase, however prime, to be graded down. It has been recommended that a piece of rubber hose should be used in persuading pigs to move, but even a stroke with a hose will leave a mark. Probably the best thing to use is a piece of old sacking. At the freezing works the men handling the. pigs have an excellent thing with which to encourage the pigs to move. It is made of several strips of disused inner tubing from motor cars, cemented together, and one end of this cut into ribbons. Only the fringed portion of this touches the pigs. The touching is very lightly done. Any farmer who finds it difficult to realise that hitting a pig lightly with a stick will leave a disfiguring mark on the carcase should visit the freezing works when his own pigs are being dealt with, and see for himself. To see some carcases- with red marks all over them, and the red colour standing out vividly against the white skin would quite cure any farmer of ever striking a pig again. Until farmers and all those concerned in the conveying of live pigs have become educated to the necessity of exercising the greatest care in the handling of porker pigs, the individual, the industry and the country must seriously suffer.

BREEDING SOWS JAPANESE TESTS. ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE. A recent visitor ti> Japan has declared that the Japanese are the most efficient people in the world. He was speaking from a manufacturing point of view. But they are proving particularly thorough in their development of live stock. Some years back figures were published of the production of a Friesian cow in Japan, but the record was so extraordinary (the actual figures cannot be recalled) that it was not taken seriously, especially as no particulars were published of just how the record was calculated. Now the Japanese are teaching the world, and particularly New Zealand, a lesson in the thorough going way they are studying the pig. This may be gauged from the investigations _ carried out by one of the prominent breeders in conjunction with the Central Meteorological Observatory in Japan from which it appeared that the period of gestation of a sow varies according to the change in atmospheric pressure. A prolonged enquiry suggested that birth takes place earlier at the time of normal or high pressure and longer when low pressure prevails. No fewer than 1075 farrowings were recorded, the average period of gestation being 114.647 days. As between the Middle White and Berkshire breeds the results showed 114.039 for Middle White and 115.548. for Berkshires.

SPEEDING CROPS. REMARKABLE RESULTS. London, August iO. A director of the company that controls the exploitation of Dr. Spangenberg’s speed crop formula, Mr. V. D. Dashwood, claims that the process is particularly applicable to Australia. Pastoralists will reap the greatest advantage, especially in drought periods, says Mr. Dashwood. Australian conditions are suitable because by the process growth is not affected by climate, whether Polar or Equatorial. Professor Kaye, chief of the laboratory of the National Institute of Dairying Research at Reading, has reserved his judgment on the formula pending three months’ experiments. Grown in accordance with the formula, oats and maize planted for a week reached a height of lOin. on experimental plots at the laboratory, yielding in 10 days a crop which would normally require two to three months to grow. The produce was immediately fit for use as human and animal food.

The process can be applied to any seed crop. It entails placing seeds in earthless trays in an air-tight, lightless cabinet, where they are irrigated by a mixture of water and chemicals, the nature of which is a secret.

It is declared that the fodder so grown rapidly increases the milk yield of cows and the weight of cattle and results in larger hens’ eggs. Crops are being sown, in areas selected in Yorkshire and Gloucestershire by the controlling company,