PIG INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 November 1938, Page 3

PIG INDUSTRY

PRODUCING THE BEST BACON CARCASE SCHEME FOR TATOOING. DOMINION-WIDE ORGANISATION (By the Dept, of Agriculture.) Farmers anxious to ascertain the best breed of pigs for bacon production will be interested ill a scheme for tattooing which has been approved by the National Pig Industry Council, and which is now ready to be put into operation all over New Zealand. Farmers wishing to take advantage of this scheme are asked to write to the Secretary of the District Pig Council in their area, telling him the number of pigs that they wish to have tattooed and theii - approximate age. They are particularly requested not to delay writing until the day before selling their pigs, .since the supervisor requires time to arrange his work. The earlier he is informed the better.

No fee is charged for the service, but farmers are expected to assist with the tattooing by have a pig-proof pen or yard wherein the pigs can be held while the tattooing is done. With a suitable crush pen, a gate beside a wall, or in a drafting race, it takes only a few seconds to tattoo each pig. Only pigs intended for bacon are to be tattooed. The tattoo is struck -just in front of the shoulder on either side of the line of the backbone, and is. not visible until after the pigs are dressed. There is no obligation to sell the pigs in any way different from the way in which they are customarily sold, and whether sold in the yard at per head or per pound, the information about them will be returned to the farmer who owned them at the time they were tattooed. SCHEME OUTLINED. Briefly, the scheme is as follows. Any pig intended for bacon, whatever its breed or kind, may be tattooed, at any stage of its existence from three months old till within two or three days of slaughter. When the pig is tattooed details of the number given, of age, sex and breeding are taken and sent to the Department of Agriculture. Nothing further happens till the pig is slaughtered. At the scales, the works grader takes a note of the tattoo number, the weight, back-fat thickness, grade, and date of slaughter and sends these also to the Department of Agriculture. These details are transferred to the original docket, and a return is made out showing breed, grade, and rate of growth; this is returned to the owner. The freezing companies and other slaughtering plants have undertaken the work of recording these pigs, and it is due to their special interest and co-operation that this scheme can be put into operation. The supervisors of the District Councils have agreed to do the tattooing and provided they are given reasonable notice by the owner as to when and where pigs are to be tattooed, it should not be difficult to have the majority of baconers tattooed. The Department of Agriculture assembles the information received from the District Supervisors and the Meat Export Slaughterhouses, and sends the returns back to the farmer. This co-operation will be perfect if the farmer will give the supervisor reasonable notice of what pigs he would like tattooed so as to allow the supervisor time to arrange his work. The farmer is required to tell the supervisor’ the kind of sows and boar used to produce the pigs that are tattooed along with the date of which the pigs were born. In return the original owner receives a report on each pig tattooed showing its rate of growth, quality of carcase, reasons for being degraded, rejected or condemned where any of these occur. With this information he may quickly get into the position of knowing which strains of pigs are worth discarding or expanding,, and of discovering what circumstances of management and feeding produce good or bad results. Such information may be very valuable to the individual farmer, but its value is trivial by comparison with the information that may be obtained from a survey of large numbers of every particular breed, strain and cross. For this reason farmers who see no personal advantage in the scheme are asked to avail themselves of it for the good of the industry as a whole.

MASS SURVEY OF PIG QUALITY. If farmers give their full co-opera-tion it should be possible to have detailed information concerning as many as 80,000 pigs by the end of the season. Included in this number there may be 5000 purebred pigs, • Large Whites, Tams, Betks, or Devons, that show a grading return of sixty per cent of No 1 primes, and a growth rate from birth to slaughter of 111 b per day. There may be 3000 of a second pure breed that shows a grading return of 80 per cent No 1 primes, but a growth rate of only one pound per day. There may be 10,000 crossbreds from grade sows by purebred boars, of one breed, which differ from 15,000 crossbreds by boars of another breed in grading and growth rate to such an extent as to indicate the suitability of using a particular cross in preference to others. It may be found that certain breeds or crosses grade outstandingly when marketed at a certain weight. Within a breed it may be found that a certain strain of boar throws pigs that are outstanding for growth rate or grading returns. The possibilities of making real progress in the discovery of which pigs are best, is unlimited. It is only by getting information about large numbers under all possible conditions of feeding and management that it will be possible to arrive at reliable averages and sound conclusions.

In view of the fact that the trade have given their utmost assistance, and that it has been possible to fit this in with Departmental and other organised effort for the benefit of the industry, and since the whole success of the scheme depends now only on the use that is made of it, a confident appeal is made to every farmer producing bacon pigs to make use of the service offered. It only requires a letter from the farmer to the District Pig Council in his area advising that he has a certain number of pigs that he wishes to have tattooed.