BETTER HERDS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20168, 9 June 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

BETTER HERDS

IMPROVEMENT DESIRED REQUESTS TO BE MADE TO GOVERNMENT Shortly the New Zealand Farmers’ Union and the 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 “scrub" bulls in tho country on the lines of the South Australian Dairy Cattle Improvement Act, which is designed to help farmers to buy pure-bred bulls which provides for a levy of fOs per bull to be paid each year as a registration fee, the money to be pooled and form the basis of a fund from which the Government subsidies purchase of pure-bred 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 most not be less than 10 months old, must have passed a tuberculin test by the Government officer within six months preceding the sale, must be the progeny of a dam which, under ofiicial test, has reached the 501 b butter-fat standard in any condition satisfactory to the Department of Agriculture. On the basis of the 58,000 bulls of two years and over in the Dominion, it is estimated that there are in all 65,000 bulls of six months and over in New Zealand. Legislation based on the South Australian Act, it is estimated by the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, would provide a sum of £32,000, or, after deducting administrative expenses £30,000 annually for the subsidising of purchasing of pure-bred bulls. Assuming that the average price of bulls i bought would be 36gns, the subsidy would provide bulls in place of the pre- ■ sent “scrubs," and would, in ten years, [make a vast difference to the Dominion’s dairy herds.