BETTER HERDS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20110, 31 March 1928, Page 24 (Supplement)

BETTER HERDS

CUTTING OUT SCRUB BULLS AN EXTENSIVE SSCHEMB Shortly the New Zealand Farmers’ Union ami th** Royal Show Association intend to make further overtures to the Government in an endeavour to obtain legislation to deal with the improvement of the Dominion’s dairy herds. The two bodies desire registration of the “scrub” bulls in the country on the lines of the South Australian Dairy (•attic Improvement Act, which is designed to help farmers to buy pure-bred bulls and which provides for a levy of 10s per bull to bo paid each year as a registration fee, tho money to be pooled and form the basis of a fund from which the Government subsidies purchases of purebred bulls.

In South Australia the amount of subsidy granted to purchasers is 60 per cent, of the purchase price and the limit is £3O. Bulls purchased must not be less than 10 months old and not more than fivo years old, must have passed a tuberculin test by the Government officer within the six months preceding the sale, must be the progeny of a dam, which, under official test, has reached the 50 lbs. butter-fat standard in any lactation period and has attained the standard set for the lactation period, and must be kept in condition satisfactory to the Department of Agri-

culture. On the basis of the 5.8,000 bulls of two years and over in the Dominion it is estimated that there are, in all, 65,000 bulls of six mouths and over in New Zealand. Legislation passed on the South Australian Act, it is estimated by the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, would provide a sum of £32,500, or after deducting administration expenses, £30,000 annually for the subsidising of purchases of pure-bred bulls. Assuming that the average price of bulls bought would be 36. guineas, as was the case with the six highest priced Friesians sold at a recent Weraroa sale, the subsidy would provide for the purchase every year of 1,400 pure-bred bulls in place of the present “scrubs” and would in 10 years make a vast difference to the Dominion’s dairy herds.

The scheme is designed to apply to beef bulls as well as dairy bulls, since the use of pure Aberdeen Angus, Herefords, or Shorthorn bulls would produce a better quality beef, maturing at an earlier age. Victoria is the latest Australian State to follow the lead of South Australia and move for the introduction of such legislation, the Chamber of Agriculture Having formulated a similar scheme.