PIGS AND HERRINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1940, Page 2

PIGS AND HERRINGS

DEVELOPMENTS IN FEEDING METHODS. Seven centuries ago Marco Polo told how the Arabians, impoverished by the fierce heat of the sun which scorched up the vegetation of their land, used dried fish for their cattle, sheep, goats, and horses, and converted the same substance into biscuits.

All this sounds fantastic, and perhaps it was not believed for many years, but recently it has been proved to have been- possible. Shetland ponies have often lived on a fish diet during poor seasons, and Norwegians have begun feeding pigs on surplus catches of herrings, with the result that their breakfast bacon has decidedly fishlike flavour which hardy Norsemen do not in the least resent.

But the Swedes have done better than that.

Having progressed rapidly in the art of drying grass and other fodder as an incomparable winter food for their cattle, they have learned to dry herrings by the same plant. When dried the herrings are ground up and mixed with the dried clover grass—6o per cent of the fish meal to 40 per cent of the herbage. Here, it seems, is found an ideal diet for Swedish milch cattle. The milk yield is improved in quality and quantity, and thanks to the careful. mixture of meal with vegetable matter, there is not the slightest flavour of fish. Since the introduction of these now methods of feeding it has been found that whale 'flesh, discarded when the precious oil has been taken from it. provides a wonderful addition to the died of English pigs, for pigs fed with fish vitamins come to maturity sooner than pigs fed the old-fashioned way. and the cost is much less.