M. Magne
My name is Marcel Magne and I was born in 1935 in
Arches, a small village in the Cantal which is a beautiful region in the middle
of France. I grew up during the 40s, with my brother Jean, surrounded by
forest and fields. We were a small but dynamic farming community. My family
was specialized in cow breeding.
When
I was seven, my father was away fighting the Germans. He was caught and made
captive. They sent him to Germany to work in their farms, as a prisoner. It was
a strenuous time both mentally and physically for him, of course, but also for
us at home waiting from sunrise to sunset for his return. Growing up without
knowing if your father was alive was a terrible ordeal for me and the rest of
my family.
In 1946, my father came home. Captivity had left its
mark on him. However, he learned about their research. "They
are fifteen years ahead in agriculture and breeding", he said. This was
true since, in our region, progress had been slow. There are places far more
advanced than we are so we decided that if we did not modernize then we would be
left behind. We didn't even have running water in the house...
Progress
was slow. In
the 60s, the first tractor came. It was nothing compared to the ones today,
of course, but it was a revolution on our family farm. We could have more fields, and by 1967, our surface had doubled.
I wanted to continue my father's work and his idea
of progress. We built another stable in addition to the previous one. But we
weren't rich enough to equip it totally. In fact, we had one trough for two
stables. A problem? A solution. Every day we made the cows drink
in the first stable, then we disassembled it and reassembled it in the second
stable. Yes, it's not a job for lazy people!
During
that time, I got married and we had four children: Nathalie, Marie-Pierre,
Anne-Marie and Emmanuel. The last two are twins.
The
next development came from my son Emmanuel, who went to an agricultural college
and did an internship in a company: France Embryon. This company was new and carried
out embryo sampling on cattle. That was exactly what we needed. Let me explain.
In Auvergne, we have different breeds of cows, but two are interesting for meat
production: the “Salers” and the “Charrolais”. We discovered by chance that a hybrid of them
had a better tasting meat than the others. It
had to have 50% exactly of each breed, if not, the resulting meat was not as
tasty. The
problem was that pure-breed Salers were rare and expensive. Moreover, a cow can only have two or three veals in its life. So here
was our dilemma: either we made quality meat by having hybrids (and no pure-breed
Salers for the next generation), or we bred Salers together. However, in case
of the latter, the meat was far less tasty… Like I said, the solution came from
embryo science: a cow can produce ten embryos from one fertilization. You can use them to inseminate
another cow. And here lies the interest: whatever the breed
of the inseminated cow is, the veal has the breed of its biological parents. In our situation, we could get pure-breed Salers using a
hybrid cow which we had inseminated.
To
work with France Embryon, my neighbours and I set up an association. It was
a real success: I had both hybrids and pure-breed Salers. At the "Salon de
l'Agriculture" in Paris, "Le Monde" wrote an article about me: I
was among the first breeders to use this process. It was published in 1973 and
by midday all the newspapers had been
sold out!
I
continued my work, and I got some great pedigrees: my best achievement as a
breeder was a Saler that I sold in Scotland for one million Francs, and it won
many contests there.
Today
I'm no longer at the cutting edge of progress, but I keep running my farm with
my son. I also had the great good fortune of having nine wonderful grandchildren. Last
year, one of my daughters invited me to South Africa, it was amazing.
I
have lived 80 years of a blessed life and I intend to enjoy it for a few more!
Article
by Guillaume ANDRIEUX
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