The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 5, 1929. AN URGENT PROBLEM.

Wairarapa Age, 5 July 1929, Page 4

The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 5, 1929. AN URGENT PROBLEM.

At the annual conference of the New Zealand Veterinary Surgeons l Associaof which he is president, the Director-Gtrnwal of Agriculture (Dr C. Ji ReahOs) made some interesting apd important observations on the question of hogget mortality. Food conditions, he said, were at the bottom of the trouble and were in great part responsible for many deaths of hog gets apd cases of stunted growth. This opened up a field for a great deal of research work. Another point strongly emphasised by Dr. r Beakes was the need for good management of flocks by their owners. No doubt this latter observation is thoroughly justified. Admittedly, there is good and bad farming, with many gradations between, and no doubt it is open, fo many sheepfarmers to reduce their losses by adopting improved methods that are made joszible u y knowledge already freely available.

Tfyis being said, however, it appears to be established that the present annual losses of hoggets are due in part to causes that are imperfectly understood and open, as Dr. Eeakes said, “a field for a great deal of research work.” This statement will be welcomed, but a still heartier welcome would be given to an announcement

that the Deportment of Agriculture intended to make full and ample provision for the research to which. Dr. Beakes referred. The existing resources of the Department are, of course, being brought to bear upon the problem of hogget mortality, and some work to the same end is being done at Massey College. But is not an overwhelming ease made out for amplifying these resources very considerably and for treating the research into the causes of abnormal hogget mortality as a matter of grave and imperative urgency? It will be remembered that in a recent address to the Miasterton Rotary Club, Mr. L. T. Daniell stated that out of the 26 million sheep in this country, at least two millions died annually from disease and ether causes. Of the two millions thus unprofitably lost., he added, at least a million were hoggets. Taking account of the inevitable weakening and lowering of the stamina of flocks from the same causes as account for the death of eo many hoggets, it is obvious that these figures point to a huge national loss year by year. Full publicity was given to Mr. Daniell’s pro-visional statement of the facts and it does not seem to have been challenged so far as the magnitude of the annual loss is concerned.

If only a fraction of this loss could be averted, the cost of even the most ambitious plan of research that could be adopted would be very richly repaid. Mr. Daniell’s suggestion was that a suitable committee should be set

up consisting of a veterinarian, dietist, agristoJogist and soil analyst, and that this committee should be given full freedom to work unhampered as a unit, concentrating on its special task. Action on these lines appears to be made necessary by the magnitude of the present losses of young sheep and an announcement that special research work is to be undertaken at least on the scale suggested by Mr. Daniell would follow logically upon what the Director-General of Agriculture had to say on the subject in his address to the Veterinary Surgeons’ Association.