420 Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W. [June 2, 1920. 



— * 



the cost of feeding has to be such that a sufficient margin is left to yield a 

 pruHt between expenses and gross I'eturn. This is not so important with the 

 breeder of stud stock. He expects to make most profit out of the sale of his 

 young stock, and he knows that the greater the production of the strain 

 he lireeds from, the bigger will be th^ prices he will obtain for his heifers and 

 yoiing bulls — so that in some cases it will pay to get the high production 

 Vi-ecords by feeding at a cost that would otherwise be vprohibitive. 



Another object the dairy-farmer has in testing each cow is to see if 

 the lieifers bred on the farm are an improvement on their dams — in other 

 words, to put the herd sire on trial. And it is here that the advancement 

 of these testing units is of special interest to the members of this association, 

 for by their means it is being daily proved that if improvement is to be looked 

 for with certainty in the farmers' hei'ds, a pure-bred bull from high-testing 

 stock must be used. To repeat what was said in the report presented in 

 1918, when writing of these two branches of the testing movement : " While 

 they are separate movements they are inter-dependent, for the more the 

 benefits and principles of testing are grasped by the average dairy-farmer, 

 the more he recognises the value of heredity and the keener he becomes to 

 possess a bull which, besides being pure-bred, is able to prove that he is 

 descended on both sides from high-producing strains, and that he possesses 

 the ability to pass those production traits on to his descendants." In view 

 of this, some brief mention of the present position regarding the testing of 

 the ordinary dairy herds will not be out of place in this report. Up to 

 1st March, 1918, some 55,000 records of individual cows had been made. At 

 that time the woi"k was being carried on with only one unit — 1,400 cows 

 strong — because of the war. Efforts have been made since to revive the 

 suspended associations, and during 1919 some 4,000 cows were tested in three 

 units. At the present time there are six units operating under the direction 

 of the Tweed-Richmond Herd-testing Council. 



In addition, the butter factories in the Bega district have recently taken 

 the matter up, and there is already one full unit (twenty-five members) at work 

 under the guidance of a local butter factory's directors, and very shortly 

 another, equally as strong, should be operating through a neighbouring 

 co-operative dairy company. 



These eight units should test between them this year about 8,000 

 cows — an appreciable increase from the figures of three years ago. The 

 revival would have been greater on the North Coast but for the dry season 

 that district has just gone through, and for the continuance, of the drought 

 in the western districts, which has prevented the sale of surplus young 

 stock on the coast to big inland stock-raisers. The whole of the coast is 

 over-stocked, and only a good season west of the mountains will better the 

 situation. Under these circumstances, dairy cows are milking under bad 

 conditions as regards feed, and the prospects for the coming winter are not 

 too bright. This has been a big factor in retarding the greater expansion of 

 herd-te.sting amongst dairy farmers there. 



