STERILITY IN COWS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 April 1938, Page 3

STERILITY IN COWS

PARASITES CAUSE OF TROUBLE CAUSES OF THE TROUBLE. In each year, with careful management, the proportion of calves dropped should approach 100 per cent.; but on many dairy farms, perhaps the number of calves dropped ordinarily would not approximate 80 per cent. Hence about one-fifth of the progeny is lost, says ah exchange. Apart from disease, the most common causes of sterility are protracted periods of semi-starvation, and the other extreme of overfeeding. The latter cause usually occurs among cattle prepared for the show ring. But with show cattle, the trouble may be overcome by making the animals work hard for their living, by turning them into a paddock where feed is short, and where they have to walk long distances to grass and water. When starvation is the cause the remedy is obvious. Failure to make provision for the hard times, which always come along, leads to loss through cows not breeding regularly, involving the loss of the calf, the production of the cow, and often the -cow herself.

The provision of stacks of hay in favourable seasons and keeping them in reserve until required may make all the difference between profit and loss. The breeding animal should be of adult age, neither under or over-fed, and should have moderate exercise.

The common practice of allowing the bull to run with the cows is not a desirable one. With the bull kept under control he is able to serve more cows, and the time of cows coming in may be so arranged that they will calve when feed should be available, in normal seasons, and when butterfat is not usually at its lowest price.