Farming Column

Hokitika Guardian, 1 April 1933, Page 8

Farming Column

WHAT OF FUTURE?

BRITISH DAIRYING PROBLEM.

That the British dairy farmer like his brother in New Zealand and, Australia, is beginning to think “of 14s dairy cows 111 terms of production, 4s. ; evident from this comment by a writer, in Live Stock Bulletin. Developments in the future must be in the direction of breeding better cows. No one who is fully acquainted with the dairy stock of tin's country can be at all satisfied; in most sheds cne : visits there being too many misfits andi too many unhealthy cattle. The reason for this is due to our present method of selecting catt.'g for breeding purposes, this method being tci select by appearance' and pedigree.. This is wrong, for the only sure' guide is performance.

Let us take the question of appearance; the standard for this is the beef animal, the British farmer having been a bullock feeder be’ore he was a dairyman. Farmers like to see a cow. carrying a lot of flesh, for they imagine that flesh represents constitution, yet it is seldom that one finds a broad backed flesh-carrying, cow is the oldest, in tne' .shed; and one finds aged,Channel/Island cows. Not long ago the writer attended a sale of recorded cowsone cow’s record was not given—it was so poor. Yet it made £23/ more: than any cow sold that, day, simply because it was a big upstanding; cow: carrying* a- lot. of flesh. When in the ring the auctioneer proclaimed: “Gentlemen, there’s a cow j that fills the eye every.time.” He w.-cs quite ■■right, but it was all it would fill. The farmer is governed in his choice f n r too much by show standard, and a hull with n good milk, pedigree; that , appears most like the bulls in the beef class, will win. The great weakness in the constitution of the cows of to-day is their i liability to mastitis, sterility, abortion and tuberculosis- and can anyone say that the fleshy cow is any more resistant than the less beefy type? There are undoubtedly points in cattle that indicate milk and points that indicate flesh, ft is possible to have both I in one animal, but it is almost impos- ! sible fo get these animals'consistency to breed such animals. Some will revert to beef and others to milk. One never knows if one buys such a bull which type he is going to leave. PediI gree breeding has done a great deal for the live stock of this country as far as beef is concerned, but not very much for milk production. Over a hundred and fifty, years ago there were cows capable of giving nine and ten gallons of milk per day, as quoted by'“Young; and Culiey, and others. Also consistent milkers . such as Mr' Cramp’s Sussex cow, which averaged 1210 gallons of milk for a period o r six years between 1805 to 1811, over 120 years ago; this cow, by the wav, was fed on concentrates with little coarse fodder,, onlv an amount that was grown on two roods ot land.

The reason why pedigree breeding has not helped the dairy- farmer is thin, I whilst milk pedigree reduces the chance I of getting a bad bull, it is no assuri nee against getting one. When a bad bull comes along ail the good work of I his predecessor is undone. I When in the United States the writer saw two bulls, full brothers, therefore having the same pedigree, but.whereas one was improving a here, the other was actually producing heifers very much inferior to the mothers. The remedy is bull testing, as now carried cut in the United States, the procedure being to use the young bull on a few cows and then turn him off until his heifers have been managed similar to their dams, and the yie’ds compared. If the results are satisfactory, then the bull is retained for asj , long as he is capable of producing, 01 course, not necessarily in the same herd.

I The writer is convinced that an; improvement that has been brough I about in this country in the yield o cows during the last 30 years, has beei : secured by better management stimu | lated by milk recording, and not a; the result of breeding from recorded cows. For in recording the calf api pears before the record, and if the reI cord of the dam is not good, the heifei 1 is either sold to someone else ('to grow into a cow), or retained to keep up | numbers; only a very minute percent- | age are fattened for beef, j What is the use, for breeding pur- ■ poses, .of knowing the record of the cow if she is to be mated with a hull of unknown record? For a' known 1 mixed with an unknown is bound to result in an unknown. An unknown is a gamble, and a gamble is not sound business. Any live stock improvement scheme for dairy cows, be it milk recording or premium bull schemes that lias not bull testing as its basis, can never lead to tlio object desired. Remember what is wanted in a cow is an animal that will produce a lot of calves, o ?id it does not really matter whether its tail at the root is cocked up an inch higher or lower than the rest of its backbone. ! Dual purpose cattle, which are the general cattle of this country, make bull testing all the more imperative, for breeders of this type of cattle know only too well that bulls of similar pedigree can leave, very different offsnring, j and <1 bull that leaves the type desired is seldom met with ; should a. good one come along, he is genera 11 y dead and eaten before his value is discovered. '

TREATMENT OF GRASS.

WINTER CATTLE FOOD

A special representative of the Sunday 'limes teks of some interesting research work that is in progress at the Imperial Chemical industries Experimental Station in Berkshire, under Dr. ■S. J. Watson, who has been seeking to preserve in the grass, after it lu.a been cut, the original quantity of. protein. Forty cows are being experimen tec. upon, and the condition of these catt-e together wit'll the milk tlitfy yield and the butter produced from it, makes it only too clear already that tiie picturesque hayrick will ultimately dis appear.

One reads: “Grass as grass is a valuable food, containing 20 to 30 pel cent of crude protein. Grass allowed to wiit into hay is a food touts)filing only 11 to 12 per cent, of crude protein. It is clinied that by employing a special sort of machine to dry the grass as soon as it has been moved, Dr. Watson lias succeeded in reducing this loss. “All through last.summer this machine was busy swallowing grass and blowing hot air over it in preparation for the feeding experiments now going on. Forty tons of grass were thus treated. The tests have yielded results that, should, in due course, lead to a revel, ution on every farm throughout the country.

“Anti-flu” Butter.

“It has been found that the dried grass i.s equally as good as most concentrates—averaging, like bean meal, 17 to 18 per cent protein—and three times as good as hay. The butter product of cows fed on it contains vitamin A in a far more generous proportion than the butter of cow s fed on hay.

“Vitamin A is the anti-in‘ective vitamin, yielding protection against chills, influenza, etc., and dried grass butter might, therefore, well be called ‘antiflu ’ butter. Tt is rich, and yellow in colour, contrasting vividly with the pale product of hay. Also, it has a superior flavour to hay butter.

“The drying plant is a Heath "Robinson affair. Chemists put it together, and not engineers. Tt consists merely of an oven and a band, along which the grass is carried. It is of an, immense size and the chemists admit that an engineer could build a drier half the size to do twice the work at half the cost. The grass, when it comes out, is bright green, and hnrdlv distinguishable from living grass. Tt is slightlv. brittle and is easier baled and stored.”

Experiments with Ensilage.

Mr B. A. Fixsen, secretary and demonstrator, said future developments would probably include farmers owning their own drying plants; drying factories in agricultural areas; and circus driers, private or company-owned, travelling from farm to farm. The, .Dinner will save all the money he now spends on imported foods fur his stock. 111 short, h e will be a gtep nearer to being entirely self-supporting. His cattle will enjoy in the winter food of the same quality as that which they en .i°y in summer. They will be perpetually “in clover.” j

Experiments are also being carried out in ensilage, since ensilage, though not comparable with dried'grass, is superior to ordinary hay in protein value. Among the methods of ensilaging under trial is one adopted from Finland, producing what is known as “A.1.V.” fodder, named after the inventor of the system, Dr. A t Virtanon. It entails the stocking of grass in huge containers' and of “killing” it with an acid preparation.

Theoretically, the method shout] i-*. suit in the grass retaining ;,h its p*otein contents, but the exports are noncommittal. “Our experiments show,” they say, “that we cannot make a definite pronouncement yet. Moreover, there are many problems connected with this method of ensilaging still to be solved.”

JERSEY C.O.R. BULLS.

No less than 2,097 different sires are represented by the- 5,809 Jersey cows which have received certificates to date. C.O.R. sires—that is to say, those which have four or more daughters with first-class certificates, each daughter being from a different dam—number 403. Champion butterfat bulls now total seventeen. This class' is one inaugurated by the New Zealand Jersey Cattle Breeders’ Association, the qualifications being as follows: Each bull must have five or more daughters (each from a different dam)

which under first-class C.O.R. conditions have produced 5201 b butterfat when starting test up to three years of age, 5801 b when starting between three and four years old, 6401 b when starting between four and five years of age, or 7001 b when five years old or over. (The corresponding standards for cows in the 305-dav test have recently been changed bv tlfe Association and are now 460, 510, 560 and 6201 b butterfat respectively. For 1931. the first years of operation of the 305-day test, they were 251 b less in each case than for the full year test.)