Farm Notes.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4438, 20 July 1909, Page 4

Farm Notes.

FATTENING LAMBS. A FARMER’S EXPERIENCES. A well-known Canterbury farmer ban.been good enough to give us his opinion about, rape, turnip*, etc. After stating that thousand headed kale has not given him the results expected, he goes on to say : “I find that sowing four or five ounces of Imperial Green Globe turnips mixed with the rape seed is a great success, as you can fatten lambs on the first feeding of Tape, and then the turnips are ready with the second feeding of raoe. The lambs do well on them. The turnips do not hurt the rape, nor does the rape affect the turnips. I always try to have some hay or good oat straw in the rape and turnip field, and the lambs soon start eating the hay or s'raw when on the rape. This enables the lambs to chew the cud, and hence their food does them so much more good, and prevents inflammation. A iamb or sheep cannot fatten fast on watery feed, especially in a wet season, unless they can (as the old shepherd said) “back-chew.” I find if ffney do this they get heavier and are *Detter in every way. For fattening lambs I never make small breaks on rape, but let them have a big. clean run, and in a season like the last one, keep them off perennial rye grass, as it rusts so much, and the lambs will go back in |wo cr three days that it will take them weeks to pick np again. I do not grow turnips as a single crop now for winter feading, as there are so many blights, insects and fungi, that even if the turnips survive there is not much nourishment in them

I We have a fungus blight here now called • phcma,’ which comes on the leaves first. These turn yellow, drop off, and then the fungus goes down into the bulb, and the turnip rots like an apple, and turns pithy, with black spots in th« centre, and is no good for feeding. For these reasons, I trust to rape and turnips mixed (in this way for summer er early autumn feeding, the turnip* are eaten before the blight gets too f ir) with oats and Italian rye, or white and Algerian oats mixed for fattening. I say mixed, as the white oat won’t stand much more than two feedings, and after they are done the Algerians continue to*give good feed. I lometimes mix Algerians and Duns where I want to cut them as a crop in the following spring. On the light land I have I fatten all my lambs on red clover and young grass. I unstock a clover paddock about the first or second week in Decomber ; lot the clover get up into fill bloom, and then wean the lambs which are not fat on this clover, aod they go straight ahead without a check, so long as I am able to give rhem a constant change from one padlock to another. Ido not keep them in one paddock more than a week, sometimes less. This is most importing it allows their camps to clean and iweeten.

I find dipping lambs at weaning :ime an important factor in their doing well, even if they are fairly clean. I always keep the fattening lambs in dassSs as nearly as possible alike, and lake off any backward or late lambs, ind put theta on a stubblp, for choice. Er weed out the turnips, and so bring [hem oa, as their stomachs are not rigorous enough for the strong food, Lad weak lambs always do twice as well on light land.’’ I These opinions show what difficulties the farmer has to contend with, Lad hokv much thought and consideration is required to make lamb-faUen-|n> pay. Another farmer in th 6 North Island also says that kale does lot fatten with him sq well, but stud lh°ep do well on it, and it has this as- - that it does not wither in the Iry ifeather.