FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 5 December 1907, Page 3

FARM AND DAIRY.

At last week's lecture Mr. Gilruth, Chief Government Veterinarian, advised farmers to cull out their tuberculous cattle now, whilst prices arc low, and not to defer action until their herds are composed of more valuable beasts. A correspondent writes from tile Waitara district asking us what guarantee a farmer has that. the fancy-priced stock now being imported is free from tuberculosis, lie says that at the recent sales no purchaser asked for a guarantee or assurance that the purebred stock oltered would pass the tuberculin test, and suggests that some such guarantee should be made compulsory. A hitherto unpublishem item from Air Gilruth's lecture. M(r. 11. oicy, M.11.1t., complained that the amount of money set aside by the Government for payment of compensation to farmers for the slaughter of diseased stock was altogether insufficient. Last year it was onlv about .£4OOO. Mr. Gilruth said that that was £4OOO more than was paid by any other country, lie considered that some farmers, who took every penny they could get out of a dairy cow and then handed the emaciated carcase over to the Government and claimed compensation, should get a term in gaol rather than compensation. A farmer who is breaking in a lot of heifers upon a new bush farm is puzzled to account for the outbreak of mammitis in two of his herd. These cattle were but two years old, and were running on a farm where no dairy cattle had ever grazed before. When they came in there was the suspicious symptom of a pillule in the teat. Not knowing anything of mammitis, and thinking a spell would do her good, the owner turned the heifer out -with the jpalf. Then the disease appeared in a malignant form, and she was unable even to rear her offspring. He is now wondering how the disease got on to the farm.