Famous
Jamaican Scientists Dreamers Among Us - The Father of Jamaican
Cattle
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1970: Dr.
Thomas Lecky (centre), pioneer in cattle breeding, receiving the
first Noman Manley Award for Excellence, an illuminated scroll, from
Mrs. Edna Manley. Prime Minister, the Hon. Hugh Shearer,
applauds. File
Photo. |
DR. THE HON. THOMAS P. LECKY, PH.D., O.M., O. J.,
O.B.E. (1904-1994)
Thomas Lecky, was born on a
small farm in Portland in 1904. The first Jamaican to receive a
Ph.D. in
agriculture, his work would revolutionize the Jamaican dairy industry and
improve the lives of countless small farmers.
Young T.P.
received a merit scholarship to attend the Farm School at Hope Gardens in
St. Andrew (now part of the College of Arts and Sciences, CASE, Portland).
From an early age T.P. was closely attuned to the challenges of small
farming having watched his father lose his banana crop as a result of
hurricanes three years in a row. Aware too that many of his friends and
family members in Portland suffered from an unbalanced diet, he became
particularly interested in cattle, convinced that milk and beef could help
satisfy protein needs that were not being met. Livestock also seemed a
wiser bet than a focus on crops alone.
After
graduating, Lecky went to work for the government at Hope in 1925. He
became closely involved with assessing the suitability of new breeds of
cattle being introduced to Jamaica and testing their reaction to local
conditions. Lecky learned that the cattle in Jamaica at that time were not
well suited to life on hillsides where many small farmers had holdings.
Hailing from a hilly region himself Lecky became one of Jamaica's earliest
environmentalists, a strong advocate for conservation of hillsides. He
believed that all small farmers should have cattle because besides
producing milk, every year a young animal could be sold to help pay for
school fees.
Bred for
size and strength Jamaican cattle at the time were descendants of animals
brought by the Spanish and the British hundreds of years before. In
general, they were slow to mature, grew on grass and water, had a low milk
production and a low proportion of meat around the haunches and ribs. They
were, however, champion haulers of carts and resistant to tick fever and
other tropical diseases. Lecky decided that what Jamaica needed was an
animal that would produce enough milk for farmers as well as be light
enough that they would move up and down steep hillsides.
NEW BREEDS OF CATTLE
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1960: Dr. Lecky (centre) awards Mr. Sugar Brown
Junior, owner of winning supreme champion bull at the Denbigh
Agricultural Show. FilePhoto.
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Lecky began
to dream of a new breed of cattle, a Jamaican breed. He turned his
attention to the study of animal genetics and earned degrees in
Agriculture from McGill University and Animal Husbandry from Ontario
Agricultural College, Guelph. At Guelph he focused on evaluating
cross-breeding as a means of acclimatizing European cattle to Jamaica's
environment. He concluded that the answer was not an acclimatized European
breed but a new breed, a completely adapted tropical breed. He returned to
Jamaica in 1935 and started to test his ideas. He used two lines of cattle
and began to select bulls for breeding from the best producing cows in
Jamaica. In 1949, Lecky gathered his documentation and traveled to
the University of Edinburgh where he used this research as the basis for
his doctorate. His dissertation, entitled "Genetic Improvement in Diary
Cattle in the Tropics" presented his ideas for developing a tropical dairy
breed and catapulted him to international acclaim. It considered the two
main processes by which species or breeds adapt to new environments
natural selection and mutation. Natural selection dates as far back as
Charles Darwin and is essentially the idea of survival of the fittest.
Those members of a breed with qualities most suited to a location will
survive and dominate. Mutation is the idea that actual changes are made in genes
themselves for many different reasons. After a period of time, the gene
pool of a later generation may therefore differ from the original gene
pool. Lecky noted this in animals he observed in Jamaica where some cattle
showed significant improvements after a period of 20 years.
By the
early 1950s, Lecky saw his ideas realized and the first examples of
genetically bred cattle, named Jamaica Hope, were ready. They were a
combination of the British Jersey cow (small, and light feeding) with the
Holstein (heavy milk producers) and the Indian Sahiwal breed (disease
resistant and adapted to the tropics). The Jamaica Hope could produce up
to an average of 12 litres of milk a day 3 times that produced by
other cattle on the island. Lecky's work revolutionized the Jamaican dairy
industry and indeed the dairy industry around the world. Scientists from
many different countries flocked to Jamaica to see what he had done.
Lecky's work impacted on the development of cattle in many tropical
countries.
THE JAMAICA RED Not satisfied with the Jamaica
Hope, mainly a producer of milk, Lecky turned his attention to creating a
Jamaican breed able to produce meat. He worked with cattle farmers and
looked carefully at Indian cattle. He selected from amongst a few breeds
of Indian cattle that had been brought into the island and created a new
breed known as the Jamaica Brahman, which has since become popular also in
Latin America. Farmers had noted that the imported English Red cattle,
which had not proved resistant to ticks and tropical disease, when bred
with the Jamaica Brahman, produced cattle of top quality beef. This breed
became known as the Jamaica Red the main meat-producing cattle on
the island.
THE JAMAICA BLACK Still not satisfied, Lecky
decided to focus on cattle who could live in the cooler areas of the
island where other breeds were unable to thrive. He bred the black
Aberdeen Angus from Scotland, well adapted to cool temperatures, with the
Jamaica Brahmans to produce a small, black cattle called the Jamaica
Black. Yet, even though some claim it has the best quality of beef on the
island, the Jamaica Black proved to be the most difficult breed to care
for. Not surprisingly, it did not prove to be as popular as its two
predecessors, the Jamaica Hope and the Jamaica Red, among cattle farmers.
Dr. Lecky
retired from government service in 1965, but remained available as a
consultant until close to his death in 1994. Indeed he was at work at his
beloved Bodles Research Station until a week before his death, having
dedicated over 60 years of his life to the development of Jamaican
livestock. Prior to his passing, Dr. T.P. Lecky received Jamaica's highest
civilian honour, the Order of Merit, for creating new breeds based on
foreign cattle that reproduce on their own without acting like cross
breeds or hybrids. He also received the Norman Manley Award for
excellence. A countryman at heart, Lecky took greatest consolation from
knowing he had helped small farmers like his parents improve their lot. He
is remembered as the father of the Jamaican Dairy Industry.
The Father of Jamaican Fish
AJ Thomas
1909-1988 A self-educated scientist and
international consultant, Austin James Thomas was born in 1909 in
Westmoreland. A lifelong environmentalist, careful angler and longtime
secretary of the Jamaica Angling Association, Thomas' love of fish led him
to revitalize and mechanise Jamaica's fish industry.
He first came to
prominence in 1945, not for his scientific work but because he created a
new world record by catching the largest white marlin ever seen in
Jamaica. It weighed 80 kilos seven kilos more than the previous
record holder. In 1949, his fishing skills catapulted him further
a fish he caught on the North Coast was determined to be of a new
species, as yet unknown to science. It was named Gobiosoma thomasi after
him.
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Mr. A.J. Thomas aids with fishing a small pond stocked
with African perch. Pond fishing is said to have the potential to
yield more and better fish that its salt water
counterpart. |
A NEW BREED OF FISH In that same year, Mr. Thomas
was employed as the government fisheries officer. At that time, there was
significant concern that given that fish is a staple of the Jamaican diet,
more focus should be given to developing fish for local use, reducing
reliance on imported fish. Mr. Thomas dreamed of a new breed of fish. When
he was sent to Africa to study fish that thrived in that climate he was
determined to find a fish that would adapt well to Jamaica. He returned
with perch (tilapia mossambica) and carefully built ponds in which
he measured their growth. Most of the fish did not develop and as a result
were named "ticky-ticky." Yet, Mr. Thomas noted that the male perch when
reared together grew larger. So began a period of monosex culture, or
selection of fish of the same sex an approach used on perch for the
first time ever. It was immensely successful, allowing perch to reach a
weight of half a pound in five months the best of any commercial
species. This discovery spawned successful industries in many countries
including America, Africa (where he returned as a consultant to work on
fishing cooperatives in the 1960s) and Israel.
MOTOR BOATS As a fisherman himself, Mr.
Thomas was also interested in boats. He is credited with being the first
to introduce outboard motors on local canoes in the 1950s. This allowed
fishermen to cover greater distances and catch larger amounts of
fish.
A.J. Thomas died in
1988, at the age of 79.
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