DETERIORATING BEEF HERDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 352, 12 May 1928, Page 25

DETERIORATING BEEF HERDS

TREND TOWARDS DAIRYING POSITION IN NEW ZEALAND MIjCH has been heard during the past decade of the t! 1 deterioration which has set in in the quality of the Dominion’s beef herds. Much as this tendency may be deplored, however it would appear that actual beef breeding for profit will never be much more than a side line with many of our farmers. On the smaller holdings now general in the country other lines pay better.

T\J"EW ZEALAND, -with approxi- i mately three and a-half million head of cattle of all descriptions, ' stands 27th on the list of the world’s cattle countries. Astounding though it may seem, even the Japanese Empire, according to figures compiled for the year 1926, held a slightly larger number of cattle. Thus we can never hope to carry any great weight in the beef market, especially when it is considered that there is so much room for development in Australia and South America. Beef cattle to-day are largely carried more as- a necessary adjunct in keeping the country in good heart

were left in isolated parts of England, while a striking indication of how cattle go back when once left to themselves can be taken from the bush cattle ranging over virgin lands such as the Urewera Country at the lower part of the. Auckland Province. After a generation or so these cattle tend to run to slab-sidedness, losing the compact make-up developed over generations of breeding. Little record has been kept of the British cattle prior to the eighteenth century. Up till that time the breeds which were in existence were kept very much to their separate districts