SCRUB BULLS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1938, Page 3

SCRUB BULLS

LEGISLATIVE ACTION BEING TAKEN IN AUSTRALIA. CATTLE BREEDING BILL. To not a few dairy farmers a bull is a bull, and nothing else. As long as he gets the cow in calf that is all they are worried about. They are not interested as to whether he possesses the ability to pass on any desirable traits in his character that will make for high production, nor are they particularly interested in his ancestry. It is nothing short of amazing how some dairy farmers who expect to get the maximum money out of dairying will go to a saleyards and buy for a few pounds a bull of which they know absolutely nothing. There are already too many scrub bulls in this country without farmers actually perpetuating the menace in this manner. New" Zealand breeders should be particularly interested in the fate of the Cattle Breeding Bill, which is receiving the attention of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria. The principal object of the Bill is the elimination of scrub bulls. Opposition has been expressed to clause 3 of the Bill, which provides that any bull which does not conform to a reasonable standard in respect to type, conformation of breeding, and does not show manifest evidence of the breed characteristic of one of the recognised breeds of cattle appropriate to dairy or beef production, should be condemned. Some members of the Legislative Assembly contend that many bulls of unimpressive appearance were sires of the heaviest yielding cows, and that conformity to type and stud record did not invariably indicate an animal of quality. This and other clauses have been passed on the undertaking being given that amendments would be considered on the third reading. Australia is certainly showing the way to New Zealand on the question of scrub bulls, and it is to be hoped that in this Dominion more attention will be focussed on this problem in the not distant future.