BREEDING OF STOCK

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 196, 4 September 1937, Page 17

BREEDING OF STOCK

Oor Own Correspondent.)

Pertinent Commenf on British Methods DEVEL0PMENTS ABR0AD II 1

(ITroai

LONDON, Aug. 4. Dr. G. F. Finlay, Ph.D., of Auckland, who is at present making a systematic survey of livestoek praetices and experiments throughout Great Britain, has left his headquarters at Gaius College, Cambridge, for a six weeks' visit to Scotland, where his studies will be continued. In a recent art.icle in the "Farmer and Stockbreeder," a well-known English periodical, he attraeted considerable attention by suggesting several pertinent questions: whether British pedigree breeders were resting too much on the work Of their forerunners, and whether the conventional coneeptiOn of herdbook pedigree was standing- in the way of achieving perfeetion according to to-da-y's ideals. "The great construetive breeders of Great Britain," he wrote, ."were . the product of times when statesmen, men of ietters, and many- great landpwners vied with oue another to adyanee agricultural knowledge ajid improve ■ tlie breeds of stock, This early -.work proved an inspiration right thrpugh last century, not only to honie farmers, but also to the pioneer breeders in the British colonies. These overseas stock* owners, men of British birth or British parentage, with thiB clear inspiration to carry them on, and utilising to the full the proven methods of Bakewejl and his disciples, set up a standard of animal husbandry that has become the pride of the British Empire. "I would like to emplxasise that the splendid development of stock-breed-ing in the Dominions can be attributed more to the quality of the mefi and their methods Tather than to the actual breeds of stoek Jaken out from Great Britain, impOrtant though these .have been. Overseas breeders as well as Home breeders have been markedly construetive and original in- breed establishment. Australia has to her credit the o.utstanding achievement in sheep breeding— the modern merino, In the dairy industry the Australian Illawarra Miiklng Shqrthprn breed, founded on the eatly importatipns of Shprthorns and Ayrshires and with a dash pf Devoh bjood, takes thq foremost pl'ace, ... . "New Zealand — more conservatively British in outlook and with couptry not unlike the mpre favourpd parts of Britaim— tends to follow British .practice. But here we fipd perhaps the most striking example of uew brped creation. The Corriedale breed of sheep was develpped from a deliberate effort to combine the fleece .characters 9f the merino with the mutton qualities and size of tho Lincoln and Border Leicester. This euterprise has been re* warded by the" demand for Corriedale sheep from every important sheep "country in the world, excepting only Great Britain. Before long I hope to persuade some English stockowners on the better class of sheep country to import and establish Corriedale flocks. The bright prospects for wooj seem to justify importation of the great dual purpose breed of New Zealand creation." Dr. Finlay continues by discussing new breeds of animals in various parts of the world, and he says that in this creative breed worlc the methods used do not differ greatly from the, princjples laid down by the early British breed founders. "But," he adds, "we have some knowledge of heredity that the earlier breeders did not possess — knowledge that enables us to go more directly to our ob'jective and to avoid dangers." Later in the article Dr. Finlay says: "I would like to advocate the creation of a white-faced strain of the Suffolk breed of sheep and with ' improved wool. Such would meet favour in Australia, New Zealand, and tho Argentine as breeders of fat lambs. These wool countries .do not want dusky wool. British sheep breeders have handicapped themselves both ia the home market and export trade by graf ting on pigmented ' f aces and legs to their chief Down breeds."