Farming Notes:

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 336, 18 January 1937, Page 3

Farming Notes:

FARM LABOUR. In some districts in New Zealand it appears that the labour trouble has been exaggerated as the Depart ment established a labour camp and the call for men from it was not up to expectations. It is, of course, quite possible for a farmer to strike in succession several incompetent and careless hands, who, after leaving the service, go round crying down this particular farmer, but as a general rule the employer who looks on his men as being something more, than mere chattels and shows them | some consideration can mostly get a | choice of competent workers. PHOSPHATE ON MEAT. The action of phosphate on meat was discovered at the Cambridge Low Temperature Research Station, in the course of research on the extra-cellular proteins. The possibility of the domestic application is limited to the stewing of beef and mutton, cut into small pieces, and is still under investigation. Until these investigations have been carried much further it is undesirable that! phosphate should be added to stews in domestic practice. Since, how ever, meat itself contains phosphate tenderness will be attained more quickly in stewing if concentrated stock is added from a previous stew. <SOWRSHIRE CATTLE. Ayrshire cattle seem to have the national characteristics of forcing their way by sheer merit into odd corners of the earth, states an English writer. There are now a considerable number of herds down in England and regular sales of them are held. At a sale at Crewe held in November a lot of 54 tuberculin tested cows and heifers averaged £27/10/-, the highest price being 41Jgns for a newly-calved nonpedigreed heifer. At the Lessnessock sale a heifer made 155gns paid by an American buyer. I am not now personally interested in any class of! stock, but I have been long enough in the business to realise that to make the best profits out of any class of stock you must have them in an environment which in climate and soil is as near an approach to the; original habitat of the breed as pos-1 sible. I am convinced that for South-! land conditions the Ayrshire is the! most profitable breed of dairy cattle. |

VEGETARIANS. While vegetarians and persons of exceptional digestion would, no doubt, like to see meat off the menu altogether, it is worth recalling that the recent Technical Commission on Nutrition appointed by the League of Nations (with three British members, including the Secretary of the Medical Research Committee as its Chair man) reported strongly in favour of meat among the “protective” foods in which modern diets are usually deficient. There is good reason for most of us to keep meat on the menu; but why do we tend to change over from one form to another? MEAT AGREEMENT. That “money talks” has been again abundantly proved by the terms of the meat agreement between Argentine and Britain. The one bright spot in this business is that the Dominions, though limited to a very liberal quota, the meat is not .subject to a levy. British farmers are not satisfied with the agreement, nor have they any reason to be. British millions will not submit to have their food heavily taxed and on the industrial side foreign imports must not be taxed to such an extent as to interfere with British exports and farmers being in a minority can only voice their protests. BOOM RATES. I was recently asked to guess the weight per fleece of a comparatively large clip of close on 200 bales of crossbred wool about a third of which is hogget, the same proportion from bought in ewes and the balance from ewes bred on the place states an agricultural writer. I suggested 81bs as a fair average, but found it was a fraction over 91bs. Then a discussion arose of what it would realise and as the bales average 3501bs I put the gross price at £2O per bale. Although wool prices are on a fairly good payable level now they are nothing compared to what they were in boom years. One year my hogget wool made 241 d and the ewes 22£d. This year the same wool would probably sell at Somewhere about lOd per lb under these figures, but growers are thankful for small mercies and there is no likelihood of prices getting down to 4£d for fleece wool again for a year or two.

HIRING SHEEP. On the Department of Agriculture farms, near Inverness, there is a great collection of stud animals, lent out by the State to smallholders in the highlands and islands of Scot, land. Garron, or entire hili ponies, 14 to 15 hands in height. 300 blackfaced rams, 300 Cheviot rams, many A.-A. shorthorn and highland bulls The management at those farms lend out the rams at £1 each for season, and take back in spring. The bulls are hired out at about £5 each, and taken back in winter. Those stud animals go as far as Orkney and Shetland, over the sea to Skye, and other islands. WOOL PRICES. On the part of wool growers there is naturally some anxiety as to whether the next wool sale will show any decline in prices owing to the Japanese-Australian agreement* There is admittedly a world’s shortage of wool, but will this factor alone be sufficient to keep prices up to the high levels of the recent sales? No one seems able to answer this nor can anyone do so with any degree of certainty. The Japanese have money to burn judging by the way they dominated the sales already held and it is quite possible that other buyers held -off, counting on the possibility of Japan being easier to contend with when sure of supplies from Australia. It is a complex question which will only be settled at the end of the selling season.