Wool Production And Practices Of Feeding

Press, Volume C, Issue 29513, 13 May 1961, Page 7

Wool Production And Practices Of Feeding

TT was quite normal for *■ wool to grow three times as fast in January as in July, Dr. A. E. Henderson, reader in wool at Canterbury Agricultural College, said in answer to a question at the conference of the South Island Wool Association at Lincoln this week. With sound, sensible feeding, he said it was possible to reduce this ratio to two to one but tf the scale of feeding was indifferent, as could happen on rougher country in winter, the level of wool growth in July could be only a fifth of that in January. Interpreting Australian information in terms of types of farming in Nev; Zealand. Dr. Henderson said it seemed that w’hen wool production per sheep was over the 101 b mark the value of the extra wool and cost of producing it came close to each other. In a favourable area such as the Southland plains where rainfall was evenly distributed 1 and there was a longer growing season it might be possible to take production up to 121 b a head economically. The same might also be the case in some of the favourable parts of Banks Peninsula, but in the Mackenzie Country with its five months of winter producers might have to be content with an 81b clip per sheep. Cost Of Field The crux of the matter was that if winter feed could be produced cheaply it was possible to go on to 11 or 121 b of wool but if the cost of producing this feed was going to be considerable then it' would be better to stop short of this mark and to use more sheep and accept a more mediocre level of performance. Dr. Henderson expressed the view that it might be better to produce a large quantity of good average w’ool than of specialty wools which were costly to obtain.

. A rather different view was, however, taken by the conference chairman, Mr V. M. Collins, who said that the percentage of good wools coming forward was very’ small. A factor in the recent appreciation of the better wools was possibly that they were in short supply—it had not been the ordinary* wools that had appreciated. Thus in the interests of the fight against synthetics it was likely that a larger supply of good wools would tend to keep price levels more stable. Checks Mr Collins said that in a season when farmers were hard pressed to feed their sheep—as in the early stages of last season —it often followed that there was discolouration and loss of weight. He said that he was more optimistic in this respect about the present wool growing season with its more plentiful feed supplies. But he wondered whether checking of wool growth was always due to food shortage or rather to* the system of rationing grazing employed by some farmers. It took only two days for serious effects of lack of nutrition to occur in wool, said Dr. Henderson, so that when wool was growing on the sheep's . back the farmer could not afford to make pne mistake if he did not want the mark of it to be there for the life of the fleece. Once' there was a check and the fleece became tangled there was discoloura. tion following rain. The object should be to keep a clean open fleece. There seemed to be some room for softening up a bit on hard autumn feeding practices. Dr. Henderson said Australian w'ork had indicated that it was not possible to detect manually a weakening in the strength of the staple until the strength was only about 30 per cent, of what it should be.