VALUE OF THE SHOW.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18000, 10 November 1926, Page 15

VALUE OF THE SHOW.

STIMULATES AGRICULTURE IMPROVES STOCK. Undoubtedly the main direction in which an agricultural and pastoral show can prove of value to a district is in its influence as an educational medium lor the farmer and his sons, says the ‘ New Zealand Herald.” Unfortunately it has been accepted for many generations that farming is an occupation where brawn is an essential and brains a superfluity. This may have applied in the older countries a hundred or two years ago, when precedent was the bugbear which guided and hampered the tiller of the soil and the grazier of stock, and the producers’ brains may have grown to lack that quickness of actfon'and perception which is noticeable in the commercial man where brain must be ever alert if he is to successfully forestall his competitors. To-day, when science is linked with production and new methods and theories are the order of the day, the farmer must learn to assimilate, judge and adopt or reject fresh ideas with promptitude if he hopes to keep abreast of the times. Long hours of solid manual labour in the open air are not conducive to mental alertness in the evenings, yet not harassed by the petty irritations which distract the average commercial man, the farmer should Tie able to, and can if he wishes, concentrate on the problems which, if correctly solved, would double his returns. Men, headed by Bakewell, have wrought wonders in improving the pro- ■ ductivitv of the domesticated animals. Their disciples, fortunately, are with lis to-day, and it is the result of their thinking that we go to inspect at the showgrounds where are marshalled the cattle, mountains of beef: the phenomenal sheep, perfect in fleece and frame, or the gentle dairy cow, which yields her* 10001 b of butter-fat in the THE PATH TO SUCCESS. The farmer has waited through the centuries for the man of science to show him the path to success. Now the road is mapped, with signposts to warn the traveller of dangerous byways, and practical men have trodden the road leading to sure success, yet there are those who refuse to see the way, who talk of success as luck, who reckon the old way good them. These men are hard to teach, harder, than if they were children with receptive minds, but like children they must be shown the model and told to work toward that ideal. The early at-

tempts to attain the ideal, we will suppose in the direction of breeding live stock, will be far from perfect, but if interest is once aroused the march will be always forward, for the ideal will be raised year by year.

No man has yet bred the perfect beast, be it horse, cow or sheep, lie may have far .surpassed his original ideal, but is still as far from his goal. In this the interest lies. The breeder of live stock always sees faults to correct, good qualities to improve.

To the farmer without a favourite breed, the display of live stock at a show presents merely a confusing display of good qualities portrayed in many breeds', but to the man who makes his stock his hobby, every sheep of his fancied breed as something to tell him as he leans over his show pen. In those long rows of ticketed ex- . hibits he will, maybe, find the sheep or cattle beast of his dreams and then the puzzle presents itself —how was the stock bred? THE SHORT OR LONG ROAD. Some, perhaps, will grasp at what they consider the short road to success by buying sires from the breeder of the “perfect” beast. It may prove the short rdad, or again, it may be a long and disappointing way, and it will most certainly prove an expensive road, for the farmer must pay for the time and brains of the breeder. Still, one must start with good blood and the good blood will pay for itself a hundredfold, but before the farmer spend his good money on these sires that are to do so much for him, he should study the principles that underlie the reproduction by stock of animals similar to themselves. He will find that the allimportant consideration is strain, that like produce like, and that to get the anticipated results from a sire he must be like his sire and dam as they must be like theirs, and thus back through many generations, the more the better. Freak animals there are and have been, the progeny of indifferent parents, which have been acclaimed perfect specimens bf their breed, and awarded positrons in the prize ring above competitors of undoubted lineage, but these are the exceptions that prove the rule that “like produces like" for in their sons and daughters is seen the reversion to inferior types which constituted the ancestry of the “freak.” Those are the animals one must guard against introducing to the stud if uniformity—the ambition of every breeder—is to be realised.

Even more in cross-bred than in purebred or “established” breeds, this tendency to reversion to former types must be guarded against by insisting on a long pedigree with uniformity. From crossing established breeds, some of our finest and most profitable animals have been evolved and boundless scope still awaits the adventurer in this ab-

sorbing field of cross-breeding for new types, but it is not until at least twenty generations of the cross has linebred true to type that any permanency can be guaranteed as established. PIONEERS OF NEW BREEDS. In New Zealand to-day wc need “inventors,” pioneers of new breeds suitable to our particular climate and pastoral conditions. A worthy example has been set by the New Zealand inventors of the now world-renowned Corriedales, but surely our ambition will refuse to be satisfied with one breed of sheep, when other sheep, cattle, horses and pigs await the magic development that follows reasoned mating by a competent breeder. Bakewell it was who, by his genius as a breeder and improver of stock, made possible our pastoral shows of to-day, for he blazed the track that others now follow, but he was never content with improving one animal, and his first success, the Leicester, was followed by similar improvements in Shorthorn cattle and many breeds of sheep. Great breeders, or inventors of new varieties of animal and plant life, like Robert Bakewell or Luther Burbank, may be geniuses whom we cannot hope to rival, but when you walk beside the long rows of oens at the forthcoming show and see the almost perfect animals man has evolved from the unpromising original material, give credit to the men who have expended thought and time and have experienced many disappointments that their favourite breed might be improved. Then, even if in a small way, join the band of “thinking” farmers, be you agriculturalist or stockman, and make it your goal that everything you cultivate or breed shall be improved at your hands. There is no “get-rich-quick” road in farming, but so surely as the fanner makes better stock, better grain and better pasture his ideal, and not merely the acquisition of wealth, so surely will steady prosperity follow him and not only him. but the whole community of New Zealand.