CO129-468 - Governor Sir Stubbs - 1921 [6-8] — Page 347

MEMORANDUM RE LIVE STOCK IN

THE NEW TERRITORY.

GENERAL

The economic live stock of the New Territories may be said to consist of pigs, cattle and poultry and at those Police Stations where Indians are quartered goats. The market value per head is steadily rising but it cannot be said that the rise is due to a corresponding improvement in quality although my own opinion is that the quality of the cattle has improved since I first saw them. Improvement is diffi cult and the chief factors which have delayed improvement are:-

(1) Farming tends apparently towards a conservative attitude of mind and the Chinese farmer has not yet been impresa- ed with the need or perhaps the possibility of improve- ment. While very many farmers in the New Territories know that there are cattle in neighbouring districts better than their own they attribute that, and in a measure rightly, to more favourable conditions to which they them- selves because of their local peculiarities of soil or climate, cannot attain.

(2)

The haphazard way in which cattle are bred. I have not been able to trace any local system or method although there is undoubtedly a belief that like breads like. Cattle have hardly been considered by them in this light but it is their guiding principle in the case of pig breeding.

(3) Agricultural methods as obtaining in the New Territories do not tend towards any improvement in the type of cattle bred. Grazing as a method of making a livelihood out of good land may be the least laborious but is not the most lucrative type of agriculture and this fact is so fully realized by New Territory farmers that they have relegat- ed grazing to hills where the growing of crops of roots or cereals is not possible as a paying industry. Cattle they do not breed that they may fatten and sell but simply that they may have assistance in tilling their fields. The result of this is that calves are born at any time of year and until old enough to break in for work have often a very hard struggle to keep alive, once the scanty milk supply of the mother has been cut off owing to her being called to assist in farming work. The time of her recall does not depend on the need of the calf but on the need of the soil. The calf is often to be seen disconsolate and hungry on the paddy bund while the cow labours in the field.

(4) There is practically no hand feeding of cattle unless the leading of the cattle along the paddy bunds for grazing purposes can be called hand feeding. Elsewhere, I am told, it is customary to feed and fatten cattle on sweet potatoes and many fine specimens come to Hongkong from the Hok Lo Districts where they are said to be fed in this manner. It seems to be generally considered, how- ever, in the New Territory that sweet potatoes are put to a better use than cattle feeding when they are eaten by the farmers themselves, fed to pigs, or sent for sale to Hongkong.

The backward condition of live stock generally in the New Territory has been due largely to the indifference on the part of the farmers to the whole question and largely to the ignorance which bred that indifference. Even when the farmer had heard of better things he had no knowledge as to how these might be achieved. He lived in an isolated world and the successes in money making which he heard

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