FARM NOTES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 412, 21 July 1928, Page 25

FARM NOTES

South Africa may not be troubled with rabbits or dingoes, but has other pests iu plenty. In the Graaff-Reinet district of the Cape Province alone, according to official returns, 2,117 baboons, 757 jackals, 29 lynxes and 35 eagles were destroyed during 1925 at a cost, in awards, of £829.

The successful rearing of calve 3 requires not only close attention, hut considerable experience. Boiling or sterilising separated milk used, is advocated by some, as this will destroy the living microbes, but chemical changes take place In doing so which give the milk a costive tendency and affect the health of the calves.

It has been said by some investigators that so long as pastures are managed correctly it matters but little what species of grasses they contained—they are all of equal or nearly equal nutritive value. Professor Stapleton, however, holds the opinion that species do count for a very great deal, as the nutritive values vary greatly. There are also what are known as early and late grasses, and it requires a combination of these with the average mid-summer grasses to make the ideal pasture.

“Armour’s Livestock Bureau,’ discussing price cycles in the live stock industry, states that there are distinct periods of high and low prices of beef cattle. They were high compared with other commodities in 18S5. They were again high in 1899 and 1915. The low points were 1891, 1906 and 1923. The periods of rising and falling prices each varied from six to nine years, and averaged nearly eight years. | Judging from the cyclical trend durI ing the past 40 years, a period of strong cattle prices in all probability llles ahead. At the present time the ! trend is upwards in the cattle industry-, |but downward in the sheep industry.