THE RURAL WORLD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 559, 16 April 1913, Page 6

THE RURAL WORLD.

PIG BREEDING.

THE POPULAR CA'RASE

It is gratifying to see that an attempt iB being made in England to exclude the excessively fat pig from the prize list. There is a worldwide movement against the overfat animal, indeed, the general demand is for a preponderance of flesh, rather than fat. The fat side and the large coarse ham are not wanted, and if we are to popularise pig flesh we must produce the type of animal which will give the class of meat the consumer wants. Recently we noticed that farmers were being advised to use the large white pig for crossing with the Berkshire, assuredly the wrong way of going about securing the best retail sides and hams. The Berkshire requires refining rather than being made more coarse. Too little is heard of the Tamworth these days. True, the pure bred may be a little harder to rear than some other purebreds but the crossbred is just as easy to breed and fatten as any other. Then the Tamworth is the greatest mother ot the pig tribe, while there is little doubt about the Tamworth improving the carcase of any breed it is crossed with from a quality viewpoint. It ensures that greatest of all considerations in the meat carcase —fineness of bone, while it gives a neater and meatier ham and the deßired length and depth of side. When pig breeding is better understood and the possibilities in the business are realised we will hear more of the Tamworth for crossing purposes.

THE MILKING SHORTHORN

There are few dairymen who would not like to see a really firstclasa fixed strain of milking Shorthorna established, but the fact remains that while great individual animalß are met with it is almost impossible to secure a Shorthorn bull which can be depended upon to improve milking power;, or even maintain it. We repeatedly hear of a Shorthorn cow being a deep milker, but does she produce a big yield for a few months or a full season? It is useless a cow filling a bucket twice a day for a few months in a year: it is the annual production which tells, and reckoned on this test the Shorthorn, especially the purebred, too often fails to make good Many farmers still cling to the Shorthorn, loth to relinquish the breed, but there is nothing more disheartening or vexatious than the failure to secure a bull of the desired fixity of dairy type. Many of them have had perforce to use other breeds in order to make surh of having future milkers. By all means let us have the milking Shorthorn, but it will be a good many years before the inherent beef quality is entirely eliminated. We don't remember having seen the position put so well before.as we noticed in che last issue of "Hoard's Dairyman," when that great American cow paper was discussing this subject. This paper remarked: "The great weakness of the milking Shorthorn as a dairy cow lies in the fact that too many of them have beefmaking tendencies; if it does not show in the next. There is, in other words, a broken chain of dairy blood, which will take years of careful breeding and selection to eradicate. TESTING BETTER THAN A GOLD MINE. American papers are holding up as an example to breeders of dairy stock the case of a young Holsfin-Fresian farmer who purchased a cow at auction for £l2, and afterwards refused £6OO for her, simply because he tested his stock systematically and this cow put up a 321b record, that is the fat in her week's milk was calculated to make 21b of commercial butter. After that record was made a bull calf from the cow was sold ior £2OO. From a picture published in an American paper of the cow she is evidently a high grade milking machine and if she was in .milk at the time of the purchase it is somewhat remarkable that £l2 was able to secure her. The experience, however, is a striking evidence of the money value of herd testing work Almost a parallel case has occurred in this country, Domino 111 , the queen of the Weraroa Experimental Farm herd, and the greatest milk production animal in the Dominion, was purchased at Long beach for £2O. Then when her record was published, she immediately sprang into fame. The department refused £2OO for her, and could have obtained a higher figure for possession had it then prepared to part with their champion. The first bull calf from this £2O cow realised at auction £290 guineas, and at the figure was the cheapest Holstein .bull that has been sold in the Dominion, considering that his dam has produced in the season 21,7841b of milk, and 769.8241bs of fat. Here is a cow that anyone could have purchased at a fair market price for a cow, and yet is a veritable gold mine. We certainly need not go to America for striking examples of the commercial value of systematic cow testing work.