CONSERVING THE SPRING GRASS CROP.

Shannon News, 7 June 1929, Page 4

CONSERVING THE SPRING GRASS CROP.

EXPERIMENTS IN ENGLAND

The possibilities of conserving for winter feeding some of the young leafy pasturage which grows so prolifically under the influence of fertilisers, is engaging the ever-i|ncreaising attention from English agricultural experts. At Home, as in New Zealand, now that the use of manures is more generally increasing pasture growth in the growing season, the problem is how best to utilise the surplus. One method is the making of concentrated fodders from some of,the surplus spring and summer growth. / Dr. H. E. Woodman, of the School of Agriculture, Cambridge, England, recently delivered a- lecture on the conservation of young grass for winter feeding as a protein concentrate. The lecturer remarked that* young, leafy grass was extremely rich in protein. Compared with hay, it contained a high percentage of oil and mineral constituents, and a low percentage of crude fibre. The rude composition of a feeding. stuff of course, was not always a reliable index o' the feeding value. There must be known not only its chemical composition, but also its digestibility. During the past four or five years they had .carried out almost continuously a.t Cambridge experiments to determine the digestibility of young leafy pasturage, and remarkable r«sUfcs have been obtained. High Feeding Value. < The digestibility of sudh grass compared favourably with that of linseed cake; it was superior to that of a concentrate, like palm kernel cake, and very much superior to that of the very best quality of meadow hay. Even the fibrous constituent, which in hay was often woody and of low digestibility, was, in young pasturage herbage digested to an extent equal to that of the carbohydrate fraction. It had been proved that lib. of digestible fibre was equal to lib. of starch to. the ruminant animal. They must not, therefore,, look on fibre in young pasture as a useless ingredient, but as equal to starch for fattening the animal.

The first broad generalisation he would like to make was that pasture grass, in its early stages of growth, possessed a much higher feeding value than had hitherto been, thought. Its dry matter possessed the character ot a protein concentrate of high digestibility and nutritive value. Moreover, this pasture concentrate possessed a feature lacking in many of the usual farm concentrates, in that it was capable of satisfying .. the animal’s requirements for vitamins, and also for bone and milk-forming minerals, suen as lime and phosphate. It might be asserted with reason that the cheapest and possibly the best concentrate was to be found growing within easy reach ot the homestead. Young, leafy pasturage was essentially a feeding .staff designed for production rather than for maintenance purposes. Grass Qualities Preserved.

Dt. Woodman went on to give facts from which he drew the conclusion that the- botanical composition of a pasture was of secondary importance, and that management, ensuring not only sufficient stocking, but also .adequate manuring to produce density of herbage and vigour of growth, was the primary factor, determining the nutritive value of pastures. It was, however, desirable that a pasture should contain a number of different species of grass of different seasons of luxuriance, so as to ensure a continuous succession of vigorous growths from early spring to late autumn. The lecturer showed, specimen grass cakes measuring roughly 6in. by sin. by lin., the density of which, he said, was such that 40 *ubic feet weighed one ton. Cakes had been made with a density of 25 cubic feet to the ton. The cakes retained the green colour ot fresh grass, possessed a fragrant and appetising odour, and when placed in water swelled up and disintegrated. The resultant material was scarcely distinguishable from new-mown pasture glass in respect of smell and appearance. The cakes, both in the dry and soaked condition, were eagerly consumed by all kinds of farm stock. Experiments in the feeding of cattle with the cakes showed their value as a fodder for dairy cows.

Special Value in England. Enumerating the advantages of this conservation of pasture grass, Dr. Woodman said the great obstacle to the attainment of an all-round standard of intensive animal husbandry in England was a shortage of concentrated feeding stuffs. It had been demonstrated recently that to attain an allround standard of high productivity such, for instance, as that; of the 1000gallon cow, the 200-egg hen, the pig which was ready for the factory at six months, and the steer which made “baby beef” a,t 18 months, the national bill of fare of live stock must include concentrated foods and coarse fodders in equal proportions. The central problem of to-day was to bring about a material increase in the supply of concentrated foods, and the Cambridge pasture investigations pointed the way to a simple solution. Conserved young grass contained the following excellent features:—

(1) It was highly digestible and very rich in digestive protein; (2)- it was rich in vitamins—an important matter in the feeding of farm animals during the non-grazing season; (3) it was rich in minerals like lime and phosphate; and (4) it was rich in gieen pigments, and therefore its inclusion in the rations of dairy cows would serve to keep up the colour of winter milk, and butter made therefrom, or poultry mignt be given access to it during the winter with the objects of improving the colour of the

yolk of the egg and supplying valuable protein for egg-formation. Exchanging Concentrated Fodders. The advantage of this system of conserving young pastorag© during wartime was obvious; and it would also confer an incalculable boon on droughty parts of the Empire, like Australia, where, during bad seasons, the herbage shrivelled away to nothing and hundreds of thousands of sheep died off. The produce of good seasons could be saved against a droughty year. He visualised the day when the .transport of grass cakes would hake place between parts of the Empire, and when certain favoul-ed Dominions would engage in the production of dried grass cakes for transport to the more needy parts of the Empire. It would be necessary to have a suitable machine capable of , cutting and collecting young grass, and also a drying appliance which was able to dry down the herbage quickly and economically. He had fairly good grounds for supposing that the cutting and drying should not cost more than about £2 pet ton of dried grass cake, but he hoped by the end of the coming season to be in possession of data on this point.

On unmanured pasture of moderate quality the season’s yield of dried, grass cakes should be in the neighbourhood of two tons per acre, but there was no reason why first-class pastures under a system of fertilising should not produce 3 to 3J tons of dried grass cake per acre per season. In other words, the produce of such a pasture would be worth, on the farm which grew it and on the basis of feeding value alone, from £3O to £35 pet acre per season.