LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 234, 26 April 1928, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Rev. E. Ward has been confined to his bed with a severe chill for some days. In consequence he was not abie to participate in the Anzac Day memorial services.

An effort is being made to form a senior Rugbv team at Ngatira, and the Putaruru Rugby Union has been approached with a view to the team playing under its jurisdiction

Miss Ethel Neill, who has been employed for the past two years at the Putaruru railway tearooms, has been transferred to Frankton Junction, where she commenced her duties last Monday.

“ The Government should have gone to Waikare-moana when inaugurating its hydro-electrical scheme for the North Island,” said a prominent citizen of Wairoa, Hawke’s Bay. “ There, for an estimated cost of a million and a-half, they could have harnessed enough energy to dispense with Arapuni and Mangahao. If there should happen to be no rain for eight years the great lake would still maintain a level to keep the turbines going at full speed. The place was made for hydro supply. When an eminent engineer first examined the wonderful stream racing away over the natural dam he was so impressed that he exclaimed that in some by-gone age Waikare-moana must have been part of a huge power supply and that he almost felt impelled to search for traces of prehistoric engineering. Anyway, they’ll have to go there yet,” said the visitor. “If they’d gone there in the first place the North Island of New Zealand would have had pretty nearly the cheapest electricity in the world.”

To achieve a production of 3401 b butter-fat per cow in a herd of over 1 40 animals is an enviable thing.. It I has been accomplished by a Taranaki farmer through exceptionally heavy top-dressing and careful testing and culling (states an exchange). Reckoning butter-fat at Is 6d per lb "these cows have averaged over £25 per cow I for a season. This farmer’s position 1 is all the more to be envied when it is remembered that even if butter-fat were to fall to only Is per lb his cows would return him £l7 per cow and would still show a good profit over maintenance costs, which are generally reckoned to be between £l2 and £l3 per cow. On a 90-acre farm he has w intered 40 cows, a bull, 18 calves, three horses, and 50 grown sheep. Supplementary crops have been grown far the milking cows, and ensilage has been made each season. In effect the farm is top-dressed three times every two years, owing to the system in vogue. The land is fair average Taranaki country, and the herd is comprised of Jerseys, the replacements being made from the heifers of the best producers. The results that have been secured on this farm could be got by any progressive farmer using the same methods.