HERD TESTING.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18191, 15 February 1929, Page 5

HERD TESTING.

GROWING IN FAVOUR. According to Mr C. M. Hume, secretory of the New Zealand Herd Testing Federation, the 1928-29 season has seen a 25 per cent increase in the number of cow’s tested for production. The ' total number of cows under test at the | present time is in the vicinity of a 'quarter of a million. I Farmers are rapidly waking up to the fact that it was necessary to test their herds, stated Air Hume, and it was quite within the bounds of possibility ’ for one man to increase his average production by 1001 b of fat per cow within the comparatively short period of five .veal's. Waikato farmers were leading the. way at the present time, having} no less than one-third of their milking cows under test, which w r as equal to the Danish per centage. Furthermore, they had made Denmark had taken 33 years I To get one-third of its cows under test. The group system employed was prac- | tieally the same as that used by the j The New Zealand Federation, said Aid Hume, consisted of 18 associations operating from Kaitaia in the north to | Invercargill in the south. The number j of cows under test in each province was I approximately as follows : —Waikato, 85.000: North Auckland. 25,000: Tara- ' naki. 22,000: Bav of Plenty, 20.000; Atanawatu. 20,000: AVairarnpa, 7000; South Island 12.000. In addition, there were a number of smaller associations outside the districts mentioned. In commenting gonerallv upon the subject of herd-testing. Air Hume ‘dressed the point that to interest a farmer in his cows meant to interest him in his farm. In other words, herd-testing was the gateway to better farming.