FARMING NEWS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 47, 24 January 1938, Page 5

FARMING NEWS.

RURAL RAKINGS. Farming conditions in the Masterton district this season have not been favourable. Early indications were for a good season, but cold winds and a jack of warm rain retarded the growth of grass. Til conversation with a reporter yesterday an experienced Masteton farmer remarked on the lack of substance in this year’s feed. Stock were found not' to be fattening as well as in previous years. Conditions were good for haymaking, but many farmers bad saved only enough bay for their own stock. “There is a lot of inferior meat produced in many parts of the world, but New Zealand has little to fear if it keeps to the top-notch stuff,” declared Mr A. S. Holms, Southland district representative on the New Zealand Meat Board, when speaking to a gathering of farmers at the Makarewa freezing works, Southland. Pie stated that within the last 12 years the Dominion bad practically doubled its export of lambs, and if the present season were a good one for fattening the eountrv should reach the 10,000.000 mark. Already this season New Zealand had exported over 10,000,000 freight carcases. From the property of Mr A. Herron, Pukerau (Eastern Southland), 1001 lambs in a total of 1350, which represented the progeny of 1050 breeding ewes, have been drafted. The draft returned the very fine average weight of 35.761 b, with only three 6ccond quality lambs. The similar draft for last season was 1127 lambs with an average weight of 37.781 b, with no seconds. This year’s returns are highly satisfactory when it is considered that the season has been a most disappointing one in respect to pasture growth. The high efficiency in some phases of Now Zealand farming has been impressed upon Dr. John Hammond, of Cambridge University, an authority on diseases and breeding of five stock, who has arrived in Gisborne in the course of a tour of the Dominion at the invitation of the Government. Dr. Hammond told a reporter that he liked the Jersey cows he had seen on the trip down from Auckland, and he considered the butter-making methods very efficient. He found that in New Zealand there was a greater output per man from animal products than in England because of the more favourable climate here. The high temperatures experienced during the past week or two have been particularly trying to pigs that arc not provided with adequate shelter, and several losses have been reported, says a Taranaki paper. More serious, however, have been the losses of stock being carried by lorries and trucks to and from sales.

Harvesting operations are practically finished for this season in Taranaki, farmers having taken full advantage of the fine weather of the past fortnight to save their bay. Crops, generally speaking, have been quite good, and with very favourable weather the hay has been harvested in splendid condition. The weather this season has been moro favourable for haymaking than for some years past.