Professor leaves his legacy

AuthorJudith Lacy
Published date28 April 2022
Publication titleGuardian, The
The Massey University student liked Hawke’s Bay where his parents had a hill country sheep and beef cattle farm at Kotemaori. He thought he’d return to the province

Fifty years on the Professor of Animal Science at Massey has decided it is time to retire. He says he’s of an age when he needs to make way for younger people. The animal science group is in good heart with good student numbers.

He’ll remain at Massey one day a week as he has PhD students he is supervising and research he needs to finish plus he’ll still do some undergraduate teaching.

He is the primary investigator for a Beef + Lamb New Zealand funded project and co-investigator on a number of other projects. Blair says it will be nice to be involved and keep his brain ticking over.

He is also on the board of New Zealand Animal Evaluation, a DairyNZ subsidiary, and of Focus Genetics. He is a director of the C. Alma Baker Trust, which draws most of its revenue from a farm near Port Waikato. The trust’s purpose is to further the science of agriculture and the advancement of education.

“With those activities, there probably won’t be time to retire really.”

His earliest memories are being on the Argyll East farm his father managed inland from Waipawa.

Alexander (Alec) had fought in World War II and was eligible to participate in the land settlement scheme. Blair remembers sitting in the car with his mother while Alec went to the RSA for the ballot.

In 1959 he was successful and Blair remembers him coming back to the car “totally elated”. Using a rehabilitation loan at a low rate of interest the family were able to buy the Kotemaori farm, north of Napier.

“It was pretty rough country but it was home and it was ours.”

Blair had a great childhood growing up there. His older sister and brother were at boarding school in Napier and from about 7 he became his parents’ extra pair of hands.

He helped his father with mustering, fencing, lambing, and getting firewood. He would shoot and skin goats with the meat going to the dogs and he’d get 20c a skin. When he was old enough to be trusted with the stove he was responsible for getting dinner when his parents were on their way back from town.

He boarded at Napier Boys’ High School where his father had been a day boy. It was not a great experience for the first couple of weeks as he hadn’t been away from home before. However, he got over the shock of being away from his parents and luckily was good at sport.

This gave him something to concentrate on and he...

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