A NECESSARY CRITICISM

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 353, 19 April 1911, Page 7

A NECESSARY CRITICISM

Trior to leaving New Zealand for Australia on his way back to Scotland, Mr James Dunlop, the Scottish agricultural commissioner, expressed his candid opinion, and a very true one, on the dairy cattle of this country. He said he had been disappointed with most of the herds of cows that had come under his inspection, and he vva3 convinced that there was not only room for vast improvement with the quality of stock, but that the New Zealand farmer was not getting the results he should from the dairying industry. Good cows were all over the Dominion, bnt the number of unprofitable c-qwg was everywhere unduly excessive. He had a firm belief in the principle of cow-testing, and no part of the world had experienced better results from adopting the system than the West of Scotland, whence he hailed. Also he found moat of the dairy cattle in New Zealand crossbred from many breeds. The selection that was made of bulla was also ridiculous and quite unworthy of dairy farming. Inferior crossbred bulls, of whose pedigree the owner knew and cared nothing, were generally used, and the farmer seemed to be content as long as the bull lei'fc the* cow in calf. He trusted that the New Zealand fanner would be brought to realise that a proper aire was the foundation of successful dairy-farm-ing. He was convinced that it would repay the dairyman to take up a pure-' bred line of the best possible strain and to stick to it.