Most breeders of pedigree cattle have reached a stage in their progress towards maximum milk yields when further increases can be achieved only at the expense of the health of the animal. I believe that Breed Societies which continue to encourage the extraction of ever higher yields are merely laying the foundations of the extinction of their breeds. Sooner or later the constitution of the best milking cows will suffer and the weakness will be transmitted in ever increasing concentrations until large sections of the breed become sterile. There is bound to be a limit to the transmission of the ability to produce freak yields, particularly as the wherewithal of high milk yields and health, that is properly grown food, is slowly diminishing.

   If a limit is to be set on higher yields, what, in the face of seemingly endless increases in costs are we to do to keep income ahead of expenditure?

   There are, in my opinion, three practically untapped sources of saving: (1) Improved health in the herd. (2) Increased production efficiency, i.e. to breed for a better efficiency in the cow's ability to convert food into milk. (3) To breed for longevity. These are all sources of increased income or economy which have been largely ignored in our efforts to get more and more milk to the almost complete exclusion of any other policy.

   We hear various figures from £50 million to £250 million a year quoted as the cost of disease to the dairy farmers of this country. If the figure is somewhere between the two it means that each dairy farmer in this country could be handed something like £1,000 a year if cattle diseases cost the nation nothing, without taking any account whatever of the increased income which a disease-free herd could bring to the dairy farmer.

   Cattle disease is not inevitable as I have shown in my own herd, simply by adopting the commonsense organic methods described in Fertility Farming. The sooner the authorities accept the challenge made towards the end of this book and investigate such methods, the sooner will disease be eliminated. I expect my cows to do an average of 10 or 12 lactations with no mastitis, no sterility and no abortion and the same is possible for any farmer prepared to adopt similar methods.

   Food conversion efficiency is to some extent dependent on breed. A breed which carries flesh as well as milk always draws a proportion of its food for its own body covering—and a large frame needs a larger proportion of food to maintain it than a small one. But within all breeds it is possible to select strains which are more economical converters of food into milk. The time has come for us to measure the ability of a cow, not by the quantity of milk or butterfat she gives, regardless of all other factors, but by a unit of assessment which takes account of milk total solids production in relation to body weight and food consumed. Present-day milk recording is already obsolete. A system of recording which measures cost per gallon per cwt. of body weight gives me the only true guide to profitable milk production. Such a system provided for me the information which decided me first, when I was costing three different breeds in my herd, to discard the two uneconomical breeds and concentrate on that which produced milk at the lowest cost per gallon, and second, to give up almost entirely, feeding concentrates of any kind when I found that the yield given on grass and silage was far more profitable.

   Longevity, though perhaps the most important factor of all, takes longer to achieve in our policy of breeding. But if we are to farm well we must breed for longevity as well as for health and production efficiency. Fortunately longevity is often a result of the fertility farming methods about which I have written. Every farmer, if he has a good cow, wants to keep it as long as possible. So we must select good cows but good old ones are a better breeding bet than good young ones.

   I own the oldest living pedigree cow—Lockyers Verbena, now 22 years old—and a grandson of hers who is also a grandson of her 18-years-old sister, both great total lifetime yielders as well as show winners. This is the breeding upon which I am concentrating. This is the blood we should all look for and concentrate in our herds.

   Costs of production would then automatically fall and wastage from disease and death would be reduced to a minimum.

   An excellent demonstration of the importance of milk production efficiency as distinct from merely high yields is provided by a comparison of the moderate yielding Isfield Jersey herd of Mr. F. J. Rigby. The tables on pages 44 and 45 show first an analysis of the milk production costs of this highly efficient Jersey herd and these costs are set alongside comparative figures for the Royal Agricultural College herds. Professor Boutflour and his deputy, Kenneth Russell, have achieved considerable fame for their methods of dairy herd management, much of which is highly creditable. Their herds have come to be regarded as the criterion of efficiency. They have put all intelligent dairy farmers on their toes and given us a measure against which to test our own herd achievements. The fact that I, and others, disagree with some of the methods employed to achieve the Royal Agricultural College results is beside the point. Whatever the methods employed, dairy farming profitability demands comparisons by final results in relation to the cost of achieving them, both in judging our methods and in choosing our breeds. Mr. Rigby has shown that a moderate yielding cow which is an efficient converter can with comparatively natural methods, emulate even the achievements of the Royal Agricultural College in profitability.

   A farming friend of mine in the north is keeping about 500 cattle as well as many other animals on about 900 acres, and feeding them off the farm. I tried to persuade him to keep fewer and better cattle but he would have none of it. His theory was that if he kept valuable pedigree cattle they would only be ruined by incompetent men. Pedigree cows or reasonably high producers of any kind, he said, were only for the man who could give personal attention to his herd and thus avoid the higher loss which would result if careless treatment lost a cow.

   He works on the principle that if he can get only mediocre herdsmen, then it is more profitable to attain his required milk output from large numbers instead of high-producing animals in smaller numbers. Having got his large herd he feeds them almost entirely on bulky food; gets a herd average of about 500 gallons and no disease. With herds of 250 cows in milk he has no vet's bill. He does not even produce T.T. milk so there are no charges for tests and no elaborate efforts to produce ultra-clean milk with the attendant high costs. No purchased foodstuffs, no vet's bill, no fuel bill for sterilizing utensils, no losses from disease, not even temporary infertility! I must say that though the whole of my training and instinct rebels at the idea, it does seem to work. He maintains that 250 cows averaging 500 gallons pay him better than 125 cows averaging 1,000 gallons with all the attendant troubles which are inevitable in a 1,000-gallon average herd. And the extra quantity of farmyard manure produced well repays, he claims, the cost of feeding his extra 125 cows to get the same amount of milk.

   When I first looked into this friend's methods I couldn't make up my mind whether this was mass production of muck and milk which was also a sound proposition as a money producer, or whether it was just inefficient old-fashioned farming. But if it was inefficient farming, I decided, it was certainly scientific inefficiency and only careful costings will provide the right answer from the financial angle.

   Unfortunately my friend points to farms where testings, recordings, costings, pedigree registering and all that paper performance associated with an attested pedigree herd, are far more costly than the value of the information they produce. So he is content to enjoy what many super-efficient farmers never see, profit in every pail of milk, without spending it all and more in finding how it got there.

   There is no doubt that we have reached a stage in our milk production when the hygiene ritual is costing more than it is worth, and where much of our most costly effort in the direction of increased yield and 'improved' disease control is merely adding far more to our problems.

   Vaccination against contagious abortion, for instance, about which the veterinary profession has been so confident, is now coming unstuck. Several herd owners, some well known, have already admitted that in spite of many years of vaccination with S.19 they are now experiencing a series of abortions which have no apparent explanation.

   The Farmers' Weekly reported, on 26th October 1951, that its own herd which has been vaccinated with S.19 for many years, nevertheless had six abortions in succession for which no veterinary authority had been able to find an explanation. The following report appeared in The Editor's Diary: 'We have all been concerned over the outbreak of infertility and abortion, yet there is nothing like a little trouble at home to make one realize just how difficult a subject it is and how little is really known about it.

   "A disturbance of the normal breeding cycle in our own herd at Grove Farm has brought us face to face with a trouble as puzzling as it is sudden. Previously, we have had no serious difficulty, and we have always had our stock vaccinated with S.19.
 

   Note: All figures are weighted averages. No allowance has been made for: (a) delivery costs of any kind; (b) interest on capital; (c) managerial salary.
   The Isfield Jersey herd sold 645 gallons per cow, sold at 4s. 6d. per gallon (farm-bottled, wholesale) = £145 2s. 6d. Net cost per cow = £49 16s. Showing a margin per cow of £95 6s. 6d., excluding items (a), (b) and (c). 

 

   'After a negative blood test, we ruled out contagious abortion. Other infectious causes, such as trichamoniasas and vibrio foetus, were already eliminated for obvious reasons. This left three other possibilities—heredity (eliminated in our case on the analysis of the pedigree), some unknown deficiency or—less likely—poison.

   'Fortunately, subsequent calvings have been normal, and there is some comfort anyway in the fact that the earlier calvings were predominantly bull calves. We are also managing to get some milk out of the affected cows, so that they are not a complete loss.

   'Nevertheless, the trouble is a serious one and both the veterinary profession and we want to get to the bottom of it. It would be interesting and helpful to hear of any similar trouble occurring on other farms."

   The explanation to me seems obvious. S.19 was given the credit for a respite from abortion which follows an outbreak in any herd. The act of abortion is itself a curative process, without which an animal managed by orthodox methods would otherwise become sterile. The only permanent preventive of abortion, or any other cattle disease for that matter, is a complete revolution in management which necessitates a natural nutrition, of the soil, the calf and the cow, in that order of importance: If the soil is healthy, all the animals on the farm have a better chance of health through the home-grown food which I believe to be an essential to proper health. If the calf is naturally fed then the chances of a healthy cowhood are made safe. Then, assuming we still insist on over-exploiting the cow she has a better chance of surviving our treatment. But to expect a cow to withstand modern milk production on unnatural food without the health foundations of a reasonably natural calfhood is asking too much.


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