CATTLE RAISING.

Waipa Post, Volume III, Issue 130, 23 July 1912, Page 4

CATTLE RAISING.

MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE’S REPORT. The annual report of the Department for Agriculture remarks that cattle-breeding is proceeding at a satisfactory pace, though the principal development is taking place in connection with dairy stock. On the whole the beef cattle available cannot be said to be improving in quality, owing to the fact'that a higher percentage of the stores available for the fatteher are not of as good a quality as in the past. This is due to the dairy farmer attaching, and rightly so, due importance to special-purpose dairy breeds. Prices for fat stock were on a fairly high plane during the year, and fatteners did well out of their enterprise. The most satisfactory feature of the year was the higher percentage of calves raised in the dairying districts, and the increasing number of these retained from cows which have proved their milking capacity according to the systematic year’s testing Thus the production of our dairy stock has been placed on a very much more satisfactory basis, due to the increasing appreciation of the herdtesting campaign instituted by the Department of Agriculture. The need of the day is the provision of more purebred bulls with a milking ancestry. These can be obtained from the private breeder to only a small extent, and the Government is doing all it can to strengthen and extend the purebred herds on the experimental farms, in order that more bulls of the right type may be available for the dairy farmers of the Dominion. While there is increasing appreciation for the necessity of the better feeding of dairy stock, especially of calves, there is yet too little attention paid to this important matter, and there is urgent need of our milkproducers being educated to realise the importance of feeding the calf to the very best advantage. Herd-testing is having the effect of increasing the value of dairy cov s, and where good types of these are available high prices have been recorded. The figures giving the black-leg inoculations in Tara'naki during the past few seasons provide a good idea of the increased number of calves being raised by our dairy farmers. Three years ago the number of calves treated was 35,245, the following season 62,828, and in the season just closed 64,444.