FEEDING GORSE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 552, 22 March 1913, Page 3

FEEDING GORSE.

By One Who Has Tried It,

New forage plants are often mentioned in the "Farmer," but there ia one that few New Zealand farmers know the value of, and usually only mention it to curse. I refer to gorse. No doubt, gorse under certain circumstances is a noixous weed, but so is the onion when it is in the wrong place, i.e., in a corn paddock. But no one is foolish enough to say that the onion is a noxious weed and must not be grown because it would spoil the milk if allowed to grow wild in the dairy pasture. Gorse, if properly attended to, is one of the finest winter green feeds grown for either milking cows or horses. And it has also another good point: that land that has been in gorse for a number of years is actually richer than before the gorse was planted, because gorse has the power of collecting nitrogen from the air. The improvement iB especially noticeable on heavy land; gorse does not favour heavy land, but it will grow on it and if not too wet turns it into a friable loamy soil. Speaking from memory the value of gorse, as compared to the best Swedish turnips weight for weight, is about double. Other points in favour of gorse over the swedes are that it is not so cold or watery, and does not impart a bad flavour to the milk and butter; quite the contrary, in fact, it gives a young grass flavour and colour to the butter. When a young man in the Old Country I knew parts of the wilder districts of North Wales where the farmer simply could not exist without his gor»e for the winter feed of his cows and working horses. The land being nleak and moorish grew but poor crops of turnips and the hay and oats were mostly inclined to be short and scanty. Speaking for myself, I used tons, bought tons, and sold tons of it. We did not use it in the summer for horses aa it was considered too heating, but I am inclined to think that that was a mistake. The way it was usually prepared was by cutting it up with an old-fas-hioned chaff-cutters which had five knives on a drum revolving towards the mouth, unlike the modern chaffcutter with two or three bladeß revolving across the mouth. I believe the best way of preparing it ia with a special machine made for the purpose, which thoroughly crushes it, but I have never seen one. My brother and I used to run it through an ordinary Berthall chaff-cutter, put a little straw in the box, pack in the cut gorße, more straw on top, and run it through the second time. This made it very soft and left but few prickles not cut. New horses used to be a little shy at first until they got üßed to the roughness of it, then they were as fond of it as the rest, and both cows and horses when used to it gat very fond of it. I have seen horses chew ing the ends of sticks at least half an inch through and still warm from the fire going through it. I should very much like to see it made into ensilage. I believe that if chaffed, quite old stuff could be put into the pit, say, three or four yearß old, as, having a lot of sugar, it heats tremendously when chaffed, and would probably stand a fair amount of dry fodder, such as straw, being mixed with it. I believe an excellent mixturn would be oaten, wheat, or barley straw, especially the latter, including the barley pales from threshing. If no straw is available, gorse and New Zealand flax, the ordinary Gutty grass, or the Toi Toi, all chaffed before going into the silo, would be good. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to try it this season, or would do so and then let the "Farmer" know how it turns out, for milking cows especially. Ido not remember exactly the quantity for a feed, but I think it was about a bushel with some chaff or long hay for the cows, and for the horses rather less, with long hay and a little oats, or barley meal. If horses are fed liberally on gorse and kept standingijin the stable without exercise they get very fat, and are likely to develop "greasy heel" from the heating nature of the gorse. As regards the cultivation, it was usually sown with a light crop of oats, the oats at time of harvesting being cut high, say, three or four inches from the ground so as not to injure the young gorße plants. I think about 30Ibn to the acre of seed at Is 6d per lb was about the quantity, but it is better to err on the heavy side than no the light because it is wanted to grow up thick like corn, not tufty and bushy. Ab for as I can remember the first cutting was taken off at 12 months old, and cut every winter afterwards, but I have often cut it as old as two years or over, though it ia then rather woody and a bit hard on the chaff-cutter knives. A pair of hedger's loves are good to feed it to the chaff-cutter with. It can be cut with a heavy Bcythe or a hand hook, but no doubt a mowing machine would be the best when cutting a quantity, aay, for enßilage. When gorae had got very old it was usually fired on a frosty day. This caused" it to shoot up thickly in the spring, and when the young stuff was being cut, in 12 or 18 months' time, the dead sticks had to be picked out. Anyone wbo has a patch of old gorse and wißheß to try it for feed would do well, when cutting it down to burn, to cut it as close as possible to the surface, or better still, a little below, because of the stumps being in the way of cutting the young growth.

Ab regards it spreadng, gorse spreads more from the roots, but as it does not flower—at least not in the Old Country—-I have not had the chance of watching it here—till two years old —by which time, of course, it would be cut—that prevents its spreading by the roots, 1 believe a deep.ditch round the paddock would prevents that. I never heard of gorse being Bown for grazing purposes; it was alwayß cut and chaffed, excepting what the semi-wild'sheep got on the the mountains, where they nibbled the bushes into round balls. It may have been chaffed and fed to sheep, but I never

saw it done and only saw it used for cows, horseß* and donkey b. I do pot remember how many head of stock, say, an acre of good gorsj would feed or for how long, but I do know it went a long way. There are hundreds of acres of river beds and such like ground in New Zealand growing gorse which is looked upon as a pest and which with a little trouble would bring in enormous quantities of good feed. The above contribution is written by an English farmer, who of late years has had a considerable amount of practical experience in farming on various classes ot land in the Dominion, and ia published with the object of showing how even a "noxious weed" can be turned to profitable use. We would never adviae anyone to plant gorse as a fodder crop, for on almost any class of land more productive crops can be grown by a little careful management. The theoretical feeding value percentage composition —of gorse as compared with swedes —-as alluded to by our correspondent—is much in favour of the former, the figures for which are given in parenthesis: Water, 89,4 (72.0); albuminoids, 1.4 (3.2);' fats, .02 (1.2); carbohydrates, 7.1 (8.2.)