GENERAL FARMING NEWS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1135, 24 May 1911, Page 10

GENERAL FARMING NEWS.

i Settlement in the Mingimingi Valley is proceeding quite : satisfactorily. Dairying is-increasing and the country is rapidly losing the roughness and wildness apparent a few short years back*. The growth of grass is good, and is said to comparo very favourably with tho coast land. The winter is coining on apace'. Milking operations are necessarily being restritecd and gradually closing down for the slack season (says a. correspondent of the Hawera "Star"). . . • ■

. .The indispensableness of the horso is thus pictured by Frank Fenwick in the "Eider and Driver":—"By a thousand tokens tho horse has proved his abiding worth. He is no no toy whose transient worth may wane tomorrow; the horse has been on the job for countless"centuries. ..Ho has been.the contemporary of. every age, and a servant of. man through all theses periods of growth, development, enlargement and enrichment of life. When the bicycle enjoyed its phenomenal vague of a dozen years back, people prophesied the horse would be littlenised,' or completely abandoned, for Titling', purposes. How about it to-day? And now they are telling us that power-driven vehicles will usurti the functions of the horse and kill hiiii as dead as .the <proverbial door nail. But I beliovo it not.at all. The horse will be on the job when you and I are gone."

Writing of entires, the "Live Stock Journal" expresses the following:—"Much of the success or otherwise of a'stallion depends on the kind of treatment he gets from his groom, therefore it is highly important that tho latter should bo a natural horse-lover' with a kindly disposition. Nothing is gained by ill. treating a horse, neither are they naturally vicious and sullen tempered, therefore, when one sees a stallion which has tu submit to wearing, blinkers continually, it is natural to conclude that ho has lost confidence in man. Any hors° which gets a reputation for bad temper i;t certainly not fancied by breeders, so (hat it is of great importance that entire horses of all kinds should bo in good hands from, their youth up."

. For three years in. Berlin some working horses, during the greater part ui She year, have been fed with potatoes, without receiving cereals. The horses kept in excellent condition, although obliged to work hard. Tho rations suggestedare 301b of potatoes during winter and .101b. during spring, summer, and autumn. Ihe potatoes arc boiled-and then mixed with cut straw.

The American Tariff Board has sent a T'LS Ar S°? tin ? t« investigate the cost ot wool production. Similar investi-n----hons have been made in Ohio, Michigan Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The .cost of production in New Zealand, too ■sbeing inquired into on behalf of the ?! u : r Al f. th «e. mquries are understood to ..be-for the purpose of assisting the board in revising tho tariff. A writer in "Farm and Dairy," a Canadian paper, says that "an explanation of the high test of the New Zealand milk is found in tho fact that practically all the factories pay for the milk by straight fat

In view of the fight' that is being' put up in Australia against tho spread of the cattle tick, it is interesting to nolo the success that is attending tho work of eradication in the United States. Nearly 11,000 square miles of territory was released from quarantine for Texas fever by order of the Secretary of Agriculture on March 15. This (says the "Country Gentleman ) is a result of progress mad'o during the past year in the extermination of ticks which spread the ■ disease. The total area released from quarantine since the eradication of the ticks was systematically undertaken in the sumirer of 190 C by co-operation between Federal, State and local authorities, now amounts to nearly 110,00.0 square miles, and includes territory in ten States.