CATTLE BREEDING.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1416, 17 April 1912, Page 10

CATTLE BREEDING.

IMPROVING THE COMMON HERD. Professor Shaw, an American expert, calculates that a prepotent sire bred to a common cow will produce ft progeny with 70 per cent, of his blood, 30 per cent, of the dam's, and tlint in five crosses the common blood is practically eliminated. ' In a lecture upon breeding cattle at the North Dakota Dairymen's Convention, Professor Shaw gave tho audience some very good advico urging them to begin with tho cattle tliey already have and breeding tliem to a well-bred, prepotent sire. Ho showed how very rapidly a good siro could improve tho blood of a common herd, and that it would only be a §hort time before all tho animals would be equal to purebred so far as production is concerned. He used the following table to show in a graphi? way how rapidly the blood of tho scrub disappears when bred to a purebred sire: Per Per cent of blood cent of blood of sire in tho of dam in different different Cross. crosses. crosses; 1 70 • 30 3-90 10 3 96 1 i 99 1 5 100 0 SIZE OF URAIN SACKS. STRIPES TO INDICATE CAPACITY. The secretary of the Farmers' Union (Mr. E. C. Jack) states that tjie suggestion to adopt stripes indicating tho size of grain sacks is meeting with support on all hands. Tho whole of tho replies received so far from branches of the union aro unanimously in favour of tho proposal, but thero axe still some replies to come to hand. FINE WAIRARAPA CROPPING. LAKGE OAT YIELD.' If there is anything in the statement often made by the Maoris that an abundance of flax sticks is a sure sign of a hot and dry summer, then, writes our travelling correspondent, the absence of them should be in the opposite direction. This, says the correspondent, is borne out by recent observations in riding through several districts in tho South AVairarapa. There have been \fcry few flax sticks this season, and many clumps which had quantities of last year's "korari" have none at all this year. Seeing that we have had such a cool, damp season, and. little sun, compared with an ordinary year, it would really seem as if there was some connection between the two.

Continuing, the same correspondent says;— The Eangitikei farmers havo been shaking hands with themselves over the many excellent crops of oats they have this year, but I had to go to the Wairarapa to see a record crop. At Te Ore Ore, four miles from Masterton, thero is some magnificent land, through which flows the IVangaehu Stream, which has, during the ages, brought down from the high country the washings from the hills, depositing. them on tho rich plains we sco to-day. ■ Mr.- Frank Shaw and his son, Mr. George Shaw, are farming a portion of these lauds. Last' year they broke up a. pnddock which had formerly been in bush (on the banks of the Wangaehu). The land grows magnificent rape, but this particular paddocks of fifteen acres was sown down in oats. About fourteen and a quarter acres were in Garton's improved Abundance, and the bther three-quarters of an acre—an rape, but this particular .paddock of Agriculture—sown with "Ligowa" oats, a variety imported by the Department from Sweden.. No manure was used. The Abundance threshed out 110 bush,els to the acre, and gave 37i tons of pressed straw in tho total, tho "Ligowa" yielded at the rate of 90 bushels to the acre.

When the binder was at work cutting tho crop, only tho horses' heads and the driver could bo seen from tho opposite side. None of the crop was "laid," partly on account of the seed being a stiff straw variety, nnd also on account of it being sown after tho heaviest of the winds wero over. In the same district 1 saw some very fine paddocks of rape, but at the time of my visit most of the farmers said lambs were doing no good, the feed was too soft nnd watery—in fact, in a Mw cases the lambs had to be taken off the rape, as they scoured so bndly that they were losing condition. A good denl of cropping has Iwen done there, nnd in every direction rows of stacks could bo seeii. Grass is in great abundance, and prospects for wintor feed aro most promising.