HERD-TESTING.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17985, 2 April 1930, Page 7

HERD-TESTING.

DOMINION SUPERVISOR. TOUR OF THE SOUTH. Mr C. M. Hume, dominion supervisor of group herd testing, has returned from the South Island, where all associations except those of Marlborough and Golden Bay, which Mr Hume met in October last, were visited (states this month’s issue of the Dairy-farmer). It was a very strenuous trip, as Mr Hume covered 3500 miles by car in thirty days and held 22 meetings. Meetings were held at Motueka, Murchison, Arahura Valley, Kokatahi, Rotomanu, Ngahcre, Ikarnatua, Mangatua Junction, Wataroa, Westport, Scddonvillc and Karamoa. In alt these districts no testing is done except a little private testing, and the districts were visited with the idea of stimulating interest in herd-testing. It is practically a certainty, Mr Hume reports, that at least three groups will operate in Westland next year as well •as two groups in the Buller district, which covers Westport, Seddonville and Karamea.

Mr Hume is of the opinion that dairying must expand on the West ’Coast, with its good land and high rainfall. It is for that reason he is anxious to get the dairy farmers of the district started on group herdtesting, so that future expansion will he from profitable stock. It is much easier to effect improvement now when there are only 14,000 cows on the Coast than when the number is doubled and even trebled, as it must he within a few years. The Ideal System. At O’Kain’s Bay, on Akaroa Peninsula, Mr Hume found what is really the ideal system of group testing—all charges are borne by the O’Kain’s .Bay Co-operative Dairy Company. Every herd is, therefore, under test and lias been under test for the past three years. Iu this case if a man will not lest he must pay towards the testing of oilier men’s tierds, so that he is forced to adopt improved methods.

Mr Hume found that in South Canterbury and North Otago a very small percentage of the cows were under test. The cause of this is that dairying is, generally speaking, conducted as. a side-line to other branches of farming. Hundreds of people supply cream lo the factories from only one or two cows. At one important centre there are 832 suppliers to a factory producing only 4i'o tons of butter in the year. Over a hundred of the suppliers milk only one cow, and at least 400 are milking less than six cows. The association, or, as we know it, the individual system of testing, could very easily be carried out by these people, to whom dairying is, of course, only a side-line, and, unfortunately, being only a side-line, the owners are not particularly interested in whether a cow is profitable or not. Southland is the brightest spot in the South so far as group testing is concerned. Mr Hume had four meetings there —at Momona, Sterling, Ma Laura Island, -and Edendalej and in addition met the management committee of the Southland Association at Invercargill. Southland is one of the few associations that does not include every cow in the average, and Mr Hume dealt particularly with the desirability of coming into line with the oliier associations, so that all averages may be comparable at a glance.