LIVESTOCK HEALTH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 July 1940, Page 9

LIVESTOCK HEALTH

SOIL FERTILITY'S PART. As human beings, writes an Irish exchange, we hold the view that if we are in a “run-down” condition we are much more likely to contract any illness or infection to which we might be exposed. Yet. it continues, we seldom apply the same idea to our livestock. If livestock are in run-down condition, which can be put down to poor nutrition, i.e., lack of the essential food constituents, including minerals. vitamins, proteins, in their ’food supply, then they, too, are liable to contract infections of different kinds to which they may be exposed. Grass is the most important food of the farm livestock, but there is as much difference between young, rapidly grown and hence high quality grass on the one hand, and old, tough fibrous withered vegetation on the other, as there is between chalk and cheese. Where clovers and grasses can thrive and flourish we shall have few or no deficiency diseases in our livestock and when the requirements of the animal system are met properly the animal can withstand infection which would often gain the mastery when it is un-der-nourished. Hence, healthy livestock are associated with fertile lands, whether arable or pasture, and a due appreciation of the part which soil fertility plays in animal health should act as an incentive to build up soil fertility gradually rather than to deplete it.