West Midland farming is very varied—from intensive dairying in Cheshire and Staffordshire to intensive arable work in central Shropshire; from hop growing in Worcestershire and Herefordshire to store raising in the hills and summer feeding on the heavy clays of Warwickshire.

South Cheshire is the focal point of the great milk producing country which stretches from North Wales to Nottingham. Milk is the key note of farming throughout Cheshire and Staffordshire and a great part of north Shropshire. This was the home of farmhouse cheese-making. The region is naturally fertile and has been well worked for a long time; though lime shortage is still considerable. It is densely stocked with cows and carries a high human population; smallholdings are very numerous. No area in the country carries such a high cattle stock per acre. It looks as though numbers of cows have at last reached their peak, though the output of milk is still rising. There has been a great movement towards ensilage, particularly grass ensilage, in recent years. Attestation is now going strong after a slow start.

Bovine mastitis still causes great loss despite modern treatment, and discussion of this subject is therefore particularly appropriate to the Society of Animal Production. Data obtained before modern treatment became available, in several countries where dairying is intensive, showed that some 3-4 per cent, of dairy animals were culled annually on account of mastitis, that at any given time about 10 per cent, had some obvious abnormality of milk or udder, and that a high percentage of animals—20-40 per cent, in many areas and countries—were infected with one or other of the recognised mastitis bacteria, the majority with Streptococcus agalactiae. Much of this has been overcome by modern treatment, and in some areas Str. agalactiae mastitis has already been eradicated from large numbers of herds. There is no doubt, however, that in many other areas mastitis remains a cause of heavy loss of yield—a loss which could largely be removed by more active measures for its control.

I am going to speak on die farming area that lies between Banbury, Rugby, Northampton and runs on to Harborough and the Welland Valley. I don't know much about the northern part of this area so my remarks will be confined to an area or about 20 miles round Daventry.

This part of England has been a fattening area for hundreds of years; the soil varies from clay to a stiff loam; rainfall is about 25 in. The land is fairly well fenced with thorn hedges and much of it is in ridge and furrow. It has never been manured extravagantly but quite a bit of linseed and cotton cake was fed when they were about £6 a ton. The grassland has been maintained by careful stock management; the manure was regularly “beaten” (i.e. spread) and still is in some cases. On every farm there is the best field, and the farm usually goes into four grades. The first will finish a bullock, the next a heifer, and the third a cow, and the last is store land.

My work during the last few years has been to some extent concerned with attempts at the control of mastitis under ordinary farming conditions, and in speaking to you today I will confine my remarks to what I consider in that particular region of experience is relevant to your tasks and interests. I make no claim to have carried out any fundamental research on the micro-organisms associated with infections of the bovine udder. My aim has been rather to apply the results of primary scientific enquiries carried out at various research centres to practical problems in the field.

It will be appreciated that conditions existing on the average farm differ in many respects from those that pertain on the farms and premises of the field stations and research centres, where a more direct, complete, and constant control can be exercised by the research worker over animal management, milking practices and general hygiene, than is possible on farms scattered over a wide country area and where the investigator must of necessity work from a position somewhat remote. Much in the way of control has to be left in these circumstances to the farmer, his herdsman and the practising veterinary surgeon. The personal element therefore, will always weigh very heavily. The test of any scheme or programme designed to control mastitis is: Can it work under such conditions and produce the desired results ? I am convinced from my own experience that it can.

I agree profoundly with what Dr. Stableforth and Mr. Macpherson have said. There are, however, some points on which I would like to elaborate. The most important is the question of management. The sooner farmers fully realise the great importance of management, the sooner the control of mastitis will be effected. The question of management is inevitably one of personnel and the training of that personnel.

To-day there are fewer people than ever who can milk a cow efficiently by hand. The time has arrived when the veterinary surgeon will tell you that he would rather control mastitis in a machine-milked herd than in a hand-milked herd. That is not entirely due to the fact that you can thus eliminate the handling of the udder. It is simpler to train a man to use a machine efficiently than to hand-milk efficiently. There is no question whatsoever but that the handling of the cow's teats is a most important factor; and in machine milking the elimination of hand stripping is not only practical but is a most important contribution to avoiding transmission of infection. But more can be done.

It has often been said that “grass is the cheapest and healthiest feed we can offer our farm animals.” There is a fairly good body of evidence and some consensus of opinion that grass is a cheap food (see J. R. Currie, 1948, J. Brit. Grassl. Soc, 3:27).

Grass fed in situ is cheap for us in Britain, because it is a crop which in terms of nutrients per acre either tops the list or is always in the higher yield group among our farm crops. This is true whether we base our comparison on starch equivalent or on nitrogen (expressed as crude protein). Productive grassland is always high in its comparative values.

The following table will serve to emphasise this point.

This table is based on data published in 1941 by Leeds University, and is an example of the sort of figures frequently given in respect of different crops.

The increasing cost and scarcity of imported feeding-stuffs and the consequent increased importance of self-sufficiency has directed more and more attention to grassland in the past ten years, and with the spread of ley-farming across the borders of Scotland and Wales there has been a great increase in the acreage of temporary leys in England. But it is a commonly expressed opinion that our knowledge of how to produce grass has not been matched by knowledge of how to feed it. I think that this is an exaggerated and unduly pessimistic view. While there is undoubtedly much still to be learned about the feeding value of grass and many workers are at present studying it, I think that we have already a great fund of knowledge, and what's more that most of it has been available for the last 10-20 years at least. There is neither the time nor, in view of the reviews by Watson (1939, 1948, 1950), the need for a comprehensive review of the literature, and today I intend to give merely a brief historical review followed by a general statement of current knowledge and finally some comments on matters of interest in current grassland practice.

We have had recommended to us to-day a number of measures than we can take to control and eliminate mastitis. I have not done the things that Dr. Stableforth told us we could do. I had to determine whether in my own particular circumstances, in the state of health or disease in which my herd was at the time and was likely to be in the future, in the light of the degree of supervision I could give to my herd management and with the particular circumstances of labour at my disposal, and all the other relevant factors, I should embark on a policy of eradication or whether I should tolerate the disease.

There is, obviously not one answer for every person. It must depend on each person's circumstances. But I think in regard to these circumstances and considerations that I have mentioned I am more fortunately placed, possibly, than the average farmer, with the single exception of the amount of time I can give to supervision. My labour is above the average in intelligence; my cattle are above the average in health; they are above the average in their state of nutrition. When I weighed up these factors, my decision was, rightly or wrongly, that I should tolerate the disease and not attempt to eradicate it.

I have four dairy farms, two with pedigree Ayrshire herds and two with pedigree Friesian herds. We have a fifth herd we keep at home as a hobby herd, with special heifers and cows, and which my wife specially looks after.

On the four commercial farms we produce Certified milk. We milk about sixty cows; we also occasionally breed a pedigree bull; and we are interested in good records of butterfat. We find that the incidence of mastitis in pedigree cows is extremely important, because if a good-looking cow with a beautiful pedigree and a first-class record is suddenly struck with mastitis her whole history is ruined from the practical farmer's point of view. This is so important that on the four commercial farms we take regular monthly tests from each quarter of each cow. These are reported to me as well as to the veterinarian and to the herdsman who is handling the cows.