Trotter Brown..... the book

[exmoor dave]

Have just started reading a book on mineral supplement for livestock by a kiwi chap called Trotter Brown.

Oldish book and the chap is deceased, so far fairly interesting.

@Global ovine @Kiwi Pete can either of you shed any opinion on the book or the author?

Seems a character!

 

[Kiwi Pete]

I haven't read his book, Dave, but have heard it is a good read

 

[exmoor dave]

I haven't read his book, Dave, but have heard it is a good read

Think it would probably be right up your street Pete.

Not sure if a paper copy would be easy to find but it was about £4 on Kindle.

So far the book seems to be a log of correspondence between the author and various dept of ag staff, vets abd various skeptics.... but all very polite as you'd expect it to be in the 1930/40/50's

You've just got to try to draw out the bits that might be useful

 

[hendrebc]

This one? Its on amazon for less than £10

 

[Yale]

This one? Its on amazon for less than £10

You buy it ,I’ll borrow it,in fact you read it and tell me what I need to know.

 

[exmoor dave]

This one? Its on amazon for less than £10

That's the one

 

[Global ovine]

Have just started reading a book on mineral supplement for livestock by a kiwi chap called Trotter Brown.

Oldish book and the chap is deceased, so far fairly interesting.

@Global ovine @Kiwi Pete can either of you shed any opinion on the book or the author?

Seems a character!

Hi Dave
Brown Trotter was a very interesting character and history can record him as being both visionary and completely off beat. His fame (in NZ only at the time) came about after the "skinny sheep" policies of the Muldoon governments where subsidies were offered to those farmers who increased their stocking rates in an effort to encourage the farming industries to produce more as NZ depended so heavily upon exporting primary produce from its pastoral sector. This of course didn't happen well as performance per stock unit fell dramatically but performance per hectare increased a bit, especially wool, but the development of hill country that should not have had those subs poured into them sucked up much of this financial encouragement, so by 1984 the nation was broke. This also occurred before the affect of large scale genetic improvement in the NZ flocks and herds and improved grazing management systems.
Farmers whose stock were under nutritional stress, primarily due to over stocking, looked to other things such as trace elements to reduce animal mortality and improve performance. This time in history coincided with much discovery in regional TE variations and requirements. Here Brown Trotter was before his time. However research found that all soil types have differing chemical status and reactivity, so his work was not the bible for all. The guy took so many TEs himself, it is a wonder his guts wasn't galvanised.
Today NZ pastoral farmers have shifted their focus onto feeding and breeding better, and having the established knowledge that their soil types need certain levels of both macro and micro elements to maintain their desired level of per animal and per hectare performance. Hence productivity per ewe is now double that of the era when Brown Trotter came to be known.
I think we need to keep his work into historical perspective, just like inflating a ewe's udder was a cure for milk fever once (my mind boggles at wondering what was the first guy thinking when he discovered that?).

 

[exmoor dave]

Thanks GO,
It's a interesting book but some lines do show how dated some of it is.

I'm halfway through and the author seems to be slowly realising that what worked well on his farm is difficult to replicate on different soils.

I think he makes some good theories on the conventional wisdom that whilst lime and fert is good, it does potentially bring un-intended concequences.

Did make me chuckle that he took alot of trace elements himself.....yet continued to smoke heavily