MAKING THE BEST OF IT.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 461, 9 April 1890, Page 2

MAKING THE BEST OF IT.

As a means of utilising the straw on the farm to the best the plan of mixing it with lucerne is strongly to be commended. We have long been convinced that there is great the mixture of green lucerne and for cattle or horse-feeding and those who have given it a trial stite that the combination of two parts cf. green lucerne to one of straw makes as valuable folder, pound for pound, as does the lucerne kept separate and unmixed. By this method the worthless straw stack may be converted into valuable food and manure, and returned to the soil that produced it. Those who have experimented say that it matters but little what variety of straw is used. Wheat, oat, or barley apparently are one and the same after having absorbed the juice of the lucerne. Cattle will devour every particle of the compound, allowing none to go to waste, and some farra-rs contend that the feed is improved by the addition of straw. Another system of utilising the surplus straw was suggested to us the other day by a practical dairy farmer, who is firmly of opinion that first-class ensilage might be made of it. The gentleman referred to has not yet carried his theory into practice, hut he intends doing so shortly, and is convinced that by simply putting the straw into a silo and watering it well, ami adding molasses and a little bran a very superior description of fodder for cows would be the result. There is much in this new method worth thinking about. If successful, and there is nothing unfeasible about, the suggestion, the wheat growers on the and plains are afforded a chance of stock keeping and dairying hitherto considere 1 impracticable in snill regions ; and the keeping of stook means also maintaining the fertility of tho farm.