The Necessity for Station Cattle

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 215, 30 August 1930, Page 13

The Necessity for Station Cattle

To Make Beef Production Profitable

Baby Beef the Solution

(By

“Sundowner”)

(Written for the "Tribune.” AU Rights Reserved.)

At the present time methods of sheep-farming in New Zealand, and particularly in the North Island, are undergoing considerable change. Since the advent of the use of artificial manures for top-dressing grassland, cattle have been employed less and less in the cleaning up of rough pastures in preparation for sheep, and many farmers are now relying solely on sheep to eat all the grass that grows on the farm. In many ways this is a great mistake, and even though there may be no apparent profit at present to be made out of growing and fattening beef animals, the indirect benefit which the farmer reaps through their use certainly warrants their retention on the farm.

The twelve months through which we have just passed clearly illustrates the necessity for cattle. On very many farms the sheep could not cope with the growth of grass during last summer, and almost everywhere the country was dirty with rank dry grass throughout the winter. This dead grass, which is entirely lacking in nutritive value, smothered any fresh growth which came away in the autumn and early winter, with the result that the actual area that could be profitably grazed by the sheep was'reduced by at least fifty per cent. As a consequence sheep were starving apparently in the midst of plenty, and when forced through hunger to eat the tasteless and weathered seed stalks, this useless food set up acute indigestion which in many cases meant the loss of ewes at lambing time. Had cattle been used intelligently to thoroughly clean up this rank growth in late summer, autumn, and early winter, there would actually have been much more sheep feed, and the flock would have come through in much better condition. Cattle are also essential for some types of light country where their trampling consolidates the surface soil, and permits of the successful establishment of the better types of shallow rooting grasses. Again alternate grazing with cattle and sheep encourages variety of grasses in the pasture. Sheep are selective grazers, and if these alone are depastured they will confine their attentions to the better and sweeter grasses during the spring and summer when there is plenty on all sides, and will eat these out, at the same time allowing the coarser and inferior grasses to seed, and ultimately occupy the whole of the ground. Cattle will keep these coarser grasses grazed’equally with the finer sorts, and all will thus be succulent and growing and suitable for sheep.

CAN BEEF EXPORT BE MADE PROFITABLE.

In view of this necessity for cattle on all North Island pastures, whether top-dressed or not, farmers should seriously consider the possibility of returning to the carrying of more station-bred cattle, and see if there is any method by which the breeding and rearing of these could be made more profitable than at present. Our chief trouble in New Zealand is that the class of beef which, we produce is not in demand on the English market. The big joint of coarse meat produced by the matured four or five-year-old bullock has entirely lost favour, to be replaced by the tender and juicy small outs which can be secured from baby beef. The public’s taste has been educated to prefer young meat to that from old animals in every section. Thus we have a growing demand for lamb, and a falling off in the consumption of mutton, a preference for light porkers as against heavy, and baby beef completely ousting the heavyweight buflock of a few years ago. With our advantages of equitable climate and excellent. pastures, there appears to be no reason why we, in New Zealand, should not produce baby beef equal to anything fattened elsewhere, and this with very little assistance from concentrated foods. We have the right breeds of cattle, suitable breeding country, excellent fattening pastures, and a large area on which special fattening foods could be grown.

FATTENING SEPARATE FROM BREEDING. Most of our cattle grazing or breeding country is not suitable for fattening cattle, and particularly not suitable for fattening babybeef. We need cattle on the sheep country which will work for their living and keep the country clean. If they are intelligently managed and grazed ahead of, ar\d not with, the sheep ,breeding cows will do this work without suffering, and by providing a little better keep for them from calving time to weaning—not a difficult matter in an ordinary year—the calves will come off their mothers fat or nearly so. If the steers amongst these, together with any surplus heifers of which it was desired to dispose, were sold at this stage to men who had suitable land to carry them on fat and dispose of them as baby beef to the freezing works, much the same profitable business could be built up with baby beef in a few years as has been built up with lamb in the past. DEFINITION OF “BABY BEEF.”

The term “baby beef’’ is used to describe fat cattle which are sold for butchering below thq aver-

age age at which animals of the breed are generally ready for slaughter. In England any animal sold fat under eighteen to twenty months old, except vealers, is considered to be baby beef, and the usual age is from fourteen to eighteen months. As illustrating the gradual change in demand from matured to baby beef, in 1779 the famous Blackwell ox, at the age of six years, yielded a butcher’s carcase of more than a ton in weight, and this bullock was considered a model of a butcher’s beast. Since then, the figures supplied by the records of the Smith field Club clearly indicate the gradual decline in slaughtering age of the best specimens of fat cattle, a decline which culminates in baby beef, derived from stock under a year old. BABY BEEF PAYS BEST. The supply of baby beef at Home has grown partly through the demand for smaller joints by people with small families and from others who formerly could not, but now can, afford a frequent meat diet; partly through the spread of the knowledge that tender and juicy from young and growing animals is much more nourishing than that which is tough and old, and largely through the desire of the English farmer to obtain a quicker cash return. Not only is baby beef desired by the consumer, but it is also more profitable for the beef-fattener to produce than beef from grown cattle. Recently conducted exhaustive tests have proved that live weight is more economically obtained when the animal is young. Ordinary well-bred cattle will increase in live weight at the rate of over 21b. per day during the first year, about Iflb. the second year, and still less in the third an 1 subsequent years. To take full advantage of the first year’s growth, the stock must be well bred and the feeding must be liberal. The feeders of baby beef would seldom be the breeders, as these men have not the suitable country in the majority of cases. Hereford, Aberdeen-Angus, Shorthorn, and various crosses of these are the most popular for the production of baby beef in Great Britain, and all these breeds we have in New Zealand. Even in England and Scotland many of these young cattle are fattened solely on good grass, without the ; ,; d of concentrated foods, and it is almost certain that considerably better and cheaper production of the same could be secured here.

BABY BEEF PRODUCTION A SCIENCE.

Baby beef production as conducted in Great Britain and America is just as much a science as is fat lamb production here. There is no easy road to success, and a thorough study of the business must be made before it is entered into. Never-the-less it holds big profits for tho men who take it. up systematically, and at

the same time offers a profitable solution of the cattle grazing problem in the North Island.

It appears certain to the writer that we must return to keeping larger numbers of beef-bred cattle on our sheep grazing properties in the North island if we are to escape deterioration of pastures, sheep-sick country, and many other evils, and the only way of profitably doing this is to develop the production of baby beef.