Twin-Calf Experiment

Heat Resistance More

Important Than Food

Twin-Calf Experiment in Fiji

HOW far behind can Government publications get?

Just recently, we have received the September-December, 1952, issue of the Fiji Agricultural Journal. It has its usual quota of interesting articles on various aspects of tropical agriculture and animal husbandry, but most of the data is, of course, at least a year out of date.

It is announced editorially that the twin calf experiment, under taken in NZ and in Fiji, was com pleted “last June” and by this we presume that they mean June, 1952.

A full report of the findings, we are promised, will be published in the Empire Journal of Experimental Agriculture in 1953. This, no doubt, will be very interesting. But it would have been equally interest ing if full details could have been given in Fiji’s own Journal.

In this experiment, Fiji co operated with the NZ Department of Agriculture. Identical sets of twin heifers were obtained in NZ; one animal of each set was retained there, the other was sent to Fiji at the age of six months. Both series—in NZ and in Fiji—were fed identical food (NZ lucerne hay and concentrate of coconut meal pro

duced in Fiji).

It appears, from the sketchy details given in the Journal, that the NZ animals at two years (when they all had their first calves) weighed an average 90 lbs. more than their twins in Fiji. Also, the butterfat content of the milk of the Fiji animals, and the milk yield itself, was much lower than in their opposite, numbers

who had been retained in NZ.

The obvious inference is that some degree of heat tolerance is desirable in cattle living under tropical conditions and that good nutrition alone is not enough. This focuses attention on such breeds as Santa Gertrudis and other crosses between European breeds and zebu strains.