Providing Sufficient Supplementary Food For Stock Is Very Profitable

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 85, 23 August 1948, Page 3

Providing Sufficient Supplementary Food For Stock Is Very Profitable

Every now and again farmers are reminded of the need for providing against those times when stock face a shortage of- feed. Dairy farmers, particularly,, know that when something occurs to check the growth of grass their production will suffer. It may be an excessively dry summer, such as many . districts Jhave just experienced, or it may be a very severe winter or late spring. Those dairy farmers who have been able to profit by their own and other people’s experiences make sufficient provision by growing adequate supplementary crops to carry their herd through these lean periods of growth without the same drastic downward curve in production as it suffered generally. They have also planted good shelter from summer’s scorching rays and the winter’s biting winds. Too many farmers in the more favoured districts rely over much on normal conditions to see them through. In other words, they pin their faith to a continued growth of grass, but each time the seasons vary sufficiently from normal to severely restrict the growth of grass we hear of large numbers of dairy farmers suffering the consequences. It is easy for them to estimate' - their losses in butterfat or milk when the season’s production falls below average, and there should be no great difficulty, also, to estimate the cost of providing sufficient feed for the purpose of keeping production up at such a time. They will then find out how much they are losing in hard cash, and to this also can be added the cost of buying feed when conditions become so severe as to warrant this course. Even if the' crops are grown and not urgently required they can often be sold and, if fed to the farmer’s own stock, should mean a saving of pasture which can be used for either hay or ensilage when the time is ripe; and hay and ensilage will keep for years.