HERD TESTING

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 176, 26 June 1937, Page 6

HERD TESTING

PROFESSOR RIDDET’S VIEWS. SYSTEMS COMPARED. A brief survey of the herd testing work overseas was given by Professor AV. Riddet, Director of the Dairy Research Institute, Palmerston North, in an address to delegates to the annual meeting of the Dominion Group Herd Testing Federation at Hamilton. The New Zealand system, be said, compared more than favourably with those elsewhere. Herd testing work in the United States, said Professor Riddet. took two forms. The semi-official branch approximated to the semi-official Government testing in New Zealand, and there was also the herd improvement branch, the work of which closely resembled, in its general methods, the work done by the federation in New Zealand. The latter branch, lie said, bad grown in popularity in recent years at the expense of the former. Breed societies were also taking steps now to improve herds as a whole rather than to focus attention on individual animals.

The New Zealand herd testing movement, said Professor Riddet, was, in its organisation and activities, without superior anywhere in the world, and lie urged delegates to hold fast to the principle embodied in the federation. Most valuable work had been done by the federation through its farmer members, and it was essential for it to be carried on. Masses of data bad been gathered which would prove of great value not only to the Dominion hut to the rest of the world.

The speaker also dealt with corresponding movements in Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden. In England and AVales herd testing was not so common as in New Zealand, and tho work was organised by separate associations, as in America. There was at present no central body and no institutions corresponding to tlie Herd Recording Council or tho federation, though there was a tendency toward centralisation. In Scotland the testing system wa3 almost identical with that in New Zealand.

Regarding conditions in Denmark, be said that a relatively high proportion—--40,6 per cent. —of animals were regularly tested, and one of the reasons for this was the need of the Danish farmer to house his animals from October to May. Professor Riddet touched briefly on the work in Sweden, where testing was being extensively carried out and average production was high, being 130 kilos, or about 2701 b, according to recent figures. Of tho animals in Sweden, 26 per cent, were Friesians with an average test of 3.53, and 63 per cent, red and white cattle, a development of the Ayrshire breed, with an average test of 3.9.