Farm and Garden

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 191, 16 September 1909, Page 3

Farm and Garden

FEEDING HOf-:SK.>. It is r.ri* .ho rr.Ufh wh.v a '.•■r.-v- rata as what he thoroughly ma v.catcs ar/1 assimilates that maintains the animal in thrifty condition. Horses that go to the stable heated from work and tired from exertion should be watered and allowed to rest for thirty minutes before receiving their feed of grain. A tired animal is in abnormal condition to properly assimilate its food. The horse should be watered before being served with food, for watering the animal after feeding washes apportion of the food out of the stomach into the large intestines, where it ferments and creates gas and colic. It is a mistake to feed a horse with much bay at noon, as the nutrients in grain are concentrated and easier of assimilation than roughage. Hay should be assigned to the evening and morning feeds, when the animal has plenty of time to masticate and digest its food. Large contractors and corporations which employ many horses have found it more economical to give rations of chopped and ground feed. The grinding of oats and other cereals used as rations for horses and mixing the ground grain with moistened chopped hay has proved to be a more economical and stable regimen than feeding whole grain and uncut hay and roughage. PIGS ON FARMS. There is one advantage about pigs that makes them emphatically the stock for the poor man or the small farmer, and that is the very quick returns which they afford by the rapidity with which they increase and come to maturity, says a witcr in an exchange. A good brood sow, given good treatment, will farrow two litters of pigs in a year, that will run from sev?n to eight pigs in each litter. And if proper feed and care be given these may be ready for market by the time they are eight or nine months old at the farthest No other stock kept on the farm will make so good a return in so short a time. Sheep will come nearest to it, but in the same length of time a pig will make double the weight of a lamb. Another advantage with pigs is that they are marketable from the time they are farrowed until they are fattened for market. A sow with a litter of pigs, and growing pigs, three, four, or five months old, will always sell at full market prices; so that the farmer is not obliged to feed them to maturity to get a little money out of them. When it is considered that they utilise much on the farm that would otherwise go to waste, it is only in exceptional cases that a few cannot be kept on the farm with profit. ABOUT FERTILISERS. It may often have happened that the money expended in the purchase of artificial manuns has not turned out to be a protfiable investment. The crops have not been increased by the use of the manure to s'ich an extent that the cost of the manure has been more than covered, with the result of a satisfactory balance of profit. Disappointment naturally ensues, and a tendency on the part of the farmer to complain that the quality of the manure could not have been up to its proper standard Such complaints have come before us on several occasions.but in the absence of confirmatory evidence we are disposed to think that in most instances the failure should have been attributed to other causes. Perhaps the kind of fertiliser applied to the crop was not adapted to the requirements of the crop, or perhaps not suitable to the soil. The manure may have been of a character too one sided,and the plant in the absence of a sufficiently available phosphate of lime, or potash or nitrogen could not make good use of the other constituents in the manure. Curious mistakes of this kind are some times made. We knew a farmcr,who, having heard that potash was excellent for potatoes, applied a large quantity of kainit, but nothing else to the crop result, of course, disappointment, coupled with the assertion that he had tried potash for potatoes and it was no good. Nitrate of soda is too often applied without the user being sure that the soil has a sufficiency of the other necessary constituents. Result: Cereals that lodge, watery roots coarse grass, and afterwards the idea that the use of nitrate is productive of bulky pcor quality, whereas if the crop had been able to get combined with the nitrogen, phosphate of lime and potash, the development of the plant would have been normal, and the crop distinguished for quality just as much as for hulk. How many a sovereign is lott by such want of knowledge and judgment. LIME AND SOILS.

While the majority of soils are benefitted physically by lime, there are of course soils to which lime can give no such benefit. On such soils small applications up to as high at five hundred pound* per acre arc advantageous about twice in a decade. This ix simply to keep up a general supply of lime for the needs of the trees' food. If, however, bone or any other form of tribaaic phosphate is freely used the application of lime for food may be omittted, because the lime of the bone supplies what is needed for plant feeding purposes. The lest of a soil for lime requirements should be physical rather than chemical, as it alone measures the requirements of the soil in this respect. A good rule to observe is that all soils under cultivation need applied lime, but the qulality required is variable. The amount of lime needed for soils that require it for physical effect is from one to even three tons per acre at intervals of five or six years. Small applications not being sufficiently effective are disappointing and lead to false conclusions. Looking at the matter from a chemical standpoint, gypsum lime liberates potash which may be present but unavailable to the trees owing to the compounds in which it exists. Lime assists in conserving the nitrogeon liberated from the decomposition of manures and clover crops, and assists nitrification in conjunction with the nitrifying organisms in the soil. Lime may be said to sweeten the soil, as it readily combines with and reduces to basic or alkaline compounds the free acids formed in the soil from decomposition of organic matter.