SPEECH BY MR. REAKES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1142, 1 June 1911, Page 8

SPEECH BY MR. REAKES.

SOME INTERESTING MATTERS. A rather interesting speech (though covering familiar matters) was delivered bv Mr. C. J. Eeakes, Director of the Live Stock and Meat Division in the Department of Agriculture, at the! Farmers' Union banquet on Tuesday evening. Mr. Eeakes began by remarking that it always pleased him to meet the farmers, because the more tho fanners and his Department were in touch the better it would be for them all. He had been pleased to notice the tendency to improve in dairying. Cow-testing bad begun to go ahead, and in tho few centres in which it had been inaugurated very good work had been done. It was equally necessary to improve the quality 6f the herds from a breeding point of view, and lie believed that a movement in the right direction was now being made. To illustrate this lie mentioned that, in the year ending March, 1310, only seventeen cattle had been imported to New Zealand, while, in the following, year, there had been 137 purebred cattle, -10 of which were bulls, and a great proportion of dairy stock. The introduction of so many high-quality cattle must, in a few years' time, make a great improvement in the herds of the country. For very many years past farmers had suffered very heavy losses through a pernicious disease known as contagious abortion. A few yours ago the losses through this disease wore estimated at hundreds of thousands of pounds. He had been making inquiries, and had found that it. was now causing very little trouble, and, in some districts, it had disappeared altogether. Ho attributed this improvement to the methods of his predecessor, and the co-operation of tha farmers. The question of tuberculosis was a very important matter at present. It was making steady strides, and it had to bo tackled, and. ho had been preaching tho gosrel of pasteurisation for some time. The result of tho experiment at Glen Oroua had been eminently satisfactory. There were between 35 and 40 suppliers at tho factory, and all except six had gone through the season without having a diseased nig on his farm. There had been diseased pigs among the suppliers, but the man in charge of the experiment had been able to trace them nil to one or the other-of these six farms, and it had also boon found that there was some cause of infection on the farms to account for it, as, for instance, a diseased sow which spread tho trouble among one man's pigs. Among the cattle tho disease was most serious—in fact, if there were no tuberculosis among tho cattle, there would be none among pigs, for the extent of the disease among pigs was always in proportion to its extent among the cattle. If tho pasteurisation of skimmed milk would keep the pigs right, it would keep the calves right, too. Pasteurisation was the thing, and it was absolutely useless to think that he was going to countenance the only other system which could bo mado. use of, and which was to slaughter every cow which reacted to the tubercle test. If thoy got, the young stock clean, thoy could"then set about with the old ones. A voice: What about mnmmitis? Mr. Iteakos replied that mammitis was a thing which was extremely difficult to deal with, and no country in the world had yet found an effective method to cope with it. For some time past, at the Wallacevillo Laboratory, they had been experimenting in an . endeavour to find some form of vaccine treatment which would do good, and, in some cases, they had had success, but the successes were not consistent. They wore, however, still pegging away at it. The disease was not at present doing so much harm as had been the case a few years ago. Farmers had realised its seriousness to their cost, and were taking measures against contagion. Ho would like to ha able to exercise a little more control over public sales' in the interests of stamping out this disease altogether. (Applause.)