GREAT WEIGHTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVII, Issue 21508, 22 November 1939, Page 3

GREAT WEIGHTS

DORSET HORN-CROSS FAT LAMBS Three, Dorset-Horn cross lambs, bred and fattened on the Patangata farm of Mr S. Kitto, killed out last week at the age of 12 weeks with the remarkable dressed weights of 491bs, 471bs and 381bs. These lambs were portion of a draft sent into the works by Mr Kitto to test out under practical farm conditions the extend to which the quality of rapid maturity is transmitted by a Dorset Horn ram to his crossbred progeny. Mr Kitto interested himself in the claims that were being made for the Dorset Horn breed some time ago and decided to conduct an experiment along practical lines on his own farm, just to see how far these claims were justified. When he was putting out his rams this year, he accordingly shedded off two identical lines of ewes. On one draft he used southdown rams and on the others Dorset Horn rams. The two drafts have been run under precisely similar pasture conditions from tupping time until the present. In the draft of 40 sent forward to the works in the past week, the Dorset Horn cross lambs averaged 38.61bs and the Southdown cross lambs 321bs. The average for the whole draft was 36.81b5.