BRINGING BACK SHEEP AND COWS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 99, 2 September 1942, Page 6

BRINGING BACK SHEEP AND COWS

BRITAIN NOW TRYING OUT REVOLUTIONARY BREEDING PROCESS

Britain has begun the Empire's first large-scale experiments in artificial insemination, the revolutionary breeding process which after the war Avill do everything to bring the world's flocks and herds back to normal. Britain's experiments in artificial insemination, already successfully practised in Soviet Russia, are lie.- 1 ing conducted by the Cambridge School of Agriculture and the National Institute for Research in Dairying. They show that in one year a single bull or ram can fertilise fifteen hundred cows or ewes, bringing the best blood in the world to the humblest keeper of livestock from thousands of miles away. It is the small farmer, unable to purchase a good bull, Avho will benefit most. There lias been some doubt about the re-action to the new departure of pedigree breeders with a vested

interest in the sale of bulls but serious opposition from them is not cx ; - pecte-d although artificial insemination will certainly lower the prices of second grade bulls.

Apart from Russia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Italy had all taken lip artificial insemination before the war. The dairy breed societies in England have now recognised it and framed regulations for registering

the animals so bred. Breed societies in the United States have actually sponsored' the artificial insemina-

tion societies; and. with the present experiments in England, tlie outlook for building up the world's, livestock population is definitely hopeful.