STOCK IMPROVEMENT.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18630, 28 July 1930, Page 16

STOCK IMPROVEMENT.

EDUCATING THE BREEDER. BEST REMEDY FOR REDUCED RETURNS. In these days when pastoralists are finding that they are frequently the victims of circumstance over which they have no control —overseas markets and climate—the country is brought face to face with the necessity for using to the best advantage the resources it has. At such times production, from the point of view of quality and quantity, must be the first and only consideration, and since production in every branch of the pastoral industry is dependent on the breeding of the best stock, it follows that one of the most prossing needs of New Zealand to-day myst be better stock.

There is only one way of improving the live stock of a country, and that is by improving the stock breeder. This can be done by raising his standards, improving his education, and offering him rewards for ability and results. It is a question at the present time whether agricultural and pastoral shows are such important agents in this respect as they once were, mainly because it too frequently proves the case that too much attention is given to standards which have no relation to economic worthiness. The show ring is somewhat blind to commercial realities and tends to encourage grossly uneconomical systems of husbandry. To-day the prize is too commonly awarded to the man who exhibits the best-fitted animal and not to the exhibitor of the beast that is nearest to the ideal economic type. The fact that pedigree is an instrument wherewith to asses worthiness is not enough is not clearly enough recognised, and the prize too often goes to the best-looker instead of to the best performer. The milk record, butterfat production, bacon quality, meat production, pulling power, and the fertility record must be of paramount significance; they are the considerations that must overshadow the preferences of prejudiced judges. Judgment must be impersonal, and must be based on a record of performance, on productivity, on thriftiness, and resistance to disease before the shows can take their proper role in live stock improvement schemes. Herd-testing, pig-testing, wool yield recording, and the hundred and one schemes and systems which include considerations of fertility, prepotency, and other such—these are instances of the tools wherewith the standards of to-morrow are being fashioned in accordance with genetical fact. These are the instruments which are contributing to the education of the farmer and breeder, and they are the means by which they may hope to gain adequate rewards for the exhibition of vision and ability.

No better insurance aaginst unstable markets could be devised than this close attention to. and study of better and purer breeding. More consideration has | to be given to these matters. The old ! failing ewe. the slow-maturing, lumI bering. nondescript ox. the scrub-pig—-j these should not be good enough for I the market. The farmer must breed for quality and for good returns for the outlay he makes. He cannot get either from the “roughy.” He cannot expect results from careless, haphazard, or unstudied mating and selection. The value of the purebred sire and the proven } dam is becoming more and more recogI nised in dairy farming, but this country is not likely to get the best from the ! land until the farmer has learnt the i value of a good, typey, well-bred bull i in his beef herd. The grazier can no more afford to waste time and feed and money on rubbish than the dairyman can. Nor can the fat lamb grow- ! er expect returns from some scraggy j old ram that somebody else had scrapped. Grazing in New Zealand has not yet decided to recognise to the full the good sire, be he bull. ram. or boar. Considering the agricultural and pastoral associations, the herd and flock book societies, and all the other organisations for the improvement, protection and advertisement of stock, it is amazing that greater headway has not been made in this direction.

It is not that farmers in this country do not know what good stock is. There are stud farms in Otago with flocks and herds to teach them that. It is merely indifference, or perhaps the mistaken impression that the acquisition of good stock and the building up of a worthy herd or flock is an expensive business. But whatever the cause, it cannot be denied that the general level of quality of the commercial stock of New Zealand is pitifully low* and it is equally unquestionable that the most urgent task to be undertaken at the present time is the remedying of this state of things. Instead of worrying about overseas markets and the curtailment of imports from America and other matters upon which the most vehement discussion cannot be expected to have at the least effect the executive of the Farmers’ Union might devote some time to this question, with a view to ascertaining along what lines the idea might best be developed.

The first step to be taken is to devise some means of encouraging and. if possible, assisting farmers in the breeding of pedigree stock according to genetically approved principles and systems. If the Farmers’ Union could induce the State to sponsor and assist in such a task the farmer would reap greater and speedier benefit than he can expect to secure from a balancing of imports from America and exports to that country.