Feeding Important

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31107, 9 July 1966, Page 9

Feeding Important

’THE man who feeds his sheep well the year round comes out on top. according to Mr V. M. Collins, wool manager of Dalgety and New Zealand Loan, Ltd., in Christchurch. Talking to farmers from the Oxford and Rangiora districts attending a field day in the firm’s store this week, he said that production of an extra half pound of wool a sheep virtually meant that a farmer was getting his shearing done for nothing. A half pound of wool was worth more than 2s and the shearer received “the thick end” of 2s a sheep, he said. People did not need to put up their flock numbers to get a production increase. They could get up to a 10 per cent increase in wool production by feeding from shearing to shearing. Tenderness could be associated with yellow discolouration of Canterbury wools, he said, and this was due to a check which might be caused by a lack of feed or perhaps footrot or an illness, but in the main he thought that it was a lack of feed. Checks could also be caused by sheep being changed too quickly from a reasonable plane of nutrition to a high plane, he said. In this case the change should be made gradually. While Mr Godfrey Bowen had done a wonderful job for shearing, he had practically doubled the speed of doing the job said Mr Collins, and a bigger labour force was now needed in the shed to keep up with the shearers.

Brokers were concerned how growers shedded their sheep for shearing, he said —that was whether they were shedded in a dirty condition and before they had

had a chance to empty out Brokers had to make special bins to cope with dungstained wool.

Appealing to growers to sort short wools in the shed, he said that if they were fired into the bale and sent into the store for reclassing they would do their best but the grower would still be the loser. With second-shear wools, he said that bellies and pieces should be kept separate from the body wool. Mr Collins said that they had always held that lots containing small numbers of bales suffered a discount from buyers. He was commenting on a recent newspaper report to this effect But New Zealand had the highest average number of bales per lot in the world, he said. Here they had to keep to an average of 10 bales a lot Growers should not overpack bales where they offered them under their own brands and in groups, he said. For oddments the maximum bale weight was 4501 b and for fleece 4001 b. It was undesirable, he said, to overpack particularly secondshear wools and crutchings.

Where bales were overpacked it was difficult to extract samples for inspection and the wool did not look as well. But buyers also did not like light bales. Buyers liked a pack of around 3501 b.

Mr Collins said that growers should not use red in branding their bales. This was a colour reserved for shipping instructions. He said that growers should put their brands on the extreme edge of the cap of the bale. The bale number should be immediately under the brand leaving two thirds of the top clean for shipping rebrands.