NOTES ON RURAL TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 4031, 16 June 1931, Page 12

NOTES ON RURAL TOPICS.

The Right Type of Beef. Beef production, owing to the export demand being at the moment very limited, is not taken very seriously by the majority of farmers. They seem more or less content to cater for the local market, and as long as an animal is fat, its age and breeding is a secondary consideration. Some breeders, however, are alive to the demand of discriminating consumers, as witness the entries at the recent Otago Winter Show where the bulk of the exhibits left little to be desired, having a finish and bloom not equalled at previous show’s, and most creditable to the exhibitors. Otago and Southland has probably a record for beef production second to none in the Dominion. Producers in general must, however, observe the trend of requirements for beef production. There are still people who are keen on producing the four and five-year-old bullock and attending the market and deploring the fact that they did not get the price secured for the two and three-year-old. That was because they did not recognise the change in the customers’ requirements. The small bullock well finished at an early age is the demand of the majority of butchers to-day. The consuming public w’ants a smaller joint of beef, and the ideal type of animal to aim at is a rectangular, blocky type of beast, with great depth of flesh, short in leg, and round about ten hundredweight at two years old. This is not exactly baby beef, but beef production for the general market. Baby beef entails fattening a fast-growing animal, which means the- feeding of concentrates to a degree unknown to the majority of farmers in the Dominion. An Animal’s Horns. Answering a frequent inquiry as to how age can be told from an animal’s horns, it may be said that it is usual to count all of the horn beyond the first groove or ring as representing three years of age; then add one year to the age for each ring present towards the base of the horn. The rings are best noted on the carcass side of the horns. The growth of the horn is as follows:— Two small, hard, rounded buttons or points emerge from the skin when the calf is eight or ten days old. At three weeks a little flexible horn has appeared. At five or six months the horn commences to curve, and assumes the shape it will eventually have. Up to this time and during the first year the horn is covered with an epidermic prolongation of the skin, similar to that seen on a foal’s hoof at birth. This covering dries and scales off by the twelfth or fifteenth month, and

the horn has then its permanent, natural, shining, tough surface. In the second year the horns start a fresh growth, and a small groove is seen encircling it between the substance secreted the first year and that developed in the second. A second ring appears during the third year. These two grooves or furrows around the horn are not wel] marked, and all traces of them disappear as the animal becomes older. From three years on the growth of the horn is marked by a groove that is much deeper and so distinct that it shows as a plain elevation or ring of horny substance which forms an accurate basis for estimating the age of the animal. The teeth should also be taken into account when estimating an animal’s age. Grass Farming and Employment. In the Farmer and Stock Breeder of a recent date there is an interesting note regarding grass farming and its connection with employment. The change in farming methods is world-wide, and in New Zealand we have witnessed the area under arable farming getting less and less, with the result that fewer hands are employed on the farms and horses in considerable measure have been pushed out of their jobs. The note in question reads as follows:— “At all the agricultural meetings of fully a year ago, setting forth the

depression that existed in arable farming, the plea was put forward that unless the Government intervened hundreds of pairs of horses would have to go off farms, followed by a drift of the rural populace to the cities. At a meeting of the Farmers’ Club in London Sir Robert Greig brought a shower of criticism when he ventured the opinion that the production of good grass did not necessarily mean the displacement of labour. At a later stage the redoubtable Captain MDougal of Blythe, in his contribution to the recent Rothamsted symposium on the making of grass land, gave his experience as follows:—- About 1923 I reduced my horse strength to eight work horses (from 12), cropping 60 acres of turnips, 80 to 120 acres of oats, and the rest (840 acres) in pasture of various ages. I had expected to employ fewer men. but I saw that in order to benefit properly from the changed rotation many improvements were necessary — roads, drains, water- supply, sheds, dipper, etc.’ To overtake that work Captain M'Dougal, though dispensing with four horses, employed two extra men, so that his work is always well advanced, and he can go on with improvements.” “ This is very creditable to the captain, particularly the latter statements,” comments the editor of the Farmer and Stock Breeder. “But the men farming on the big scale that he is farming upon are in the minority, and more especially in the minority if one considers how many 800-acre farms rented probably at a few pounds per acre could be similarly treated. On the average arable farm in Scotland, where ordinary conditions prevail, the displacement of horses for a policy of grass-land farming can only mean one thing—the displacement or reduction of labour.”

Amount of Lime per Acre. An interesting position exists in regard to the amount of lime applied per acre of the area of limed grass land in the Dominion (says R. P. Connell, M.A , of the Fields Division, Palmerston North, in the Journal of Agriculture).

The average amount applied in 1929-30 was 5 l-scwt, this being 40 per cent, less less than the average amount applied per acre in 1927-28. Consideration of the average in this instance, however, does not give an accurate indication of what is taking place in the whole of New Zealand. This is because much the greater part of the increased acreage limed is m the Auckland province, which is characterised also by using a relatively "small amount per acre—an amount that seems still to be falling. It was just ove-- 3cwt per acre of the limed grass land in 1929-30. Hence the influence on the average figures for the Dominion of the rapid expansion of the Auckland limed acreage, which receives a light dressing, is apt to give an inaccurate impression of Dominion tendencies unless, as has just been done, one goes beyond merely the average figures. Actually, in some of the districts where lime is freely used, the amount applied per acre tends to remain steady and considerably above that of Auckland. In Otago, for instance, on grass land which was limed the average dressing for the past two seasons has been lOcwt per acre, and in Southland 7icwt, while in the Wellington district the average dressing on limed grass land has risen from 6cwt to 7cwt in the two seasons.

Really we have contradictory tendencies and diverse practices in different districts. At first it seems that one at least of these must be wrong. Actually both may be right. This is because lime may be applied in order to obtain one or more different effects; it may be used to prevent sourness or it may be used to improve the physical condition by flocculating .clay. By its flocculating effect on clay liming may make a heavy soil more open in texture. Where only a small amount of clay is present the flocculating action is less needed, or possibly not needed at all, and a smaller amount of lime suffices. From this it follows that clay soils may respond profitably to several times as much lime as would sandy soils. In one district improvement of the physical condition of the soil may be the objective, in another locality prevention of sourness. In the former district a tendency to heavier dressings may be sound while in the latter a tendency to lighter dressings may be equally sound. Further, one would naturally expect the price of lime to be a factor in determining the weight of dressings of lime, and hence the heavier dressings adopted in Otago and Southland are probably linked up to some extent with the lower cost of lime in those districts - AGRICOLA.

A fair amount of Russian timber is now coming into New Zealand, by way of Sydney, a commercial man told a Christchurch Sun reporter. Russian _ timber had been used in the furniture trade here for years past, he said, but previously it had come through England. Now it was coming direct from Russia to Australia, and thence here. As an instance of the low prices which the Soviet is prepared to quote, he said that a shipment of Russian three-ply oak was expected here in a few days, to sell at anywhere between 3d and 6d a foot. The Japanese three-ply oak used by the-furniture trade here sold at about 7d a foot. Some Russian timber he had seen was of excellent quality.