DAIRY HERD IMPROVEMENT.

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 108, 28 November 1918, Page 4

DAIRY HERD IMPROVEMENT.

Referring to dairy herd improvement, Prof. J. J. Hooper, an American expert, recently remarked that the first thing the farmer should do was to establish testing associations and also test his cows for official records. After having found out the bad ones, care should be exercised in the selection of a bull. A few sires were actually successful, and a few were medicore; but most of them were inferior and unable to get high-producing daughters. A careful study of the official records would show that half the bulls in use did not produce daughters that were better than their dams. A few actually raised the average of their daughters above their mothers. The quickest way to improve stock was to begin with a grade herd of good cows and to head the herd with a purebred bull. He would certainly raise the average production of the herd each succeeding year until the herd averaged above the medium of the breed. The same thing was true of a purebred herd, but no one should be satisfied with medium cattle. It was not enough to say that a herd was purebred. It should be more productive than the average, but it had to be admitted that to raise a herd to a very high standard was more difficult than to bring it to the average for the breed and to maintain it there. Eour bulls, he stated, had been kept at Kentucky (United States) experiment station farm in the last 10 years. In the case of one, the daughters were inferior to their dams; in the case of two, the daughters averaged just about the same as their mothers; the fourth bull actually increased the production of his daughters to 1500 lbs milk above their dams. The station, it was added, had a splendid bull calf coming on; he was supported on every side with high records for butter production. As early as was possible he would be given a few cows, and by the time he was coming to proper breediug age he would have a few daughters in milk. Those daughters would be watched, and their records would be compared with their dams' figures, and if the heifers were the better the young bull would be given every opportunity to improve the herd. If he was a failure he would be sent to the butcher.