FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 255, 3 December 1909, Page 3

FARM AND DAIRY.

i. A syndicate of practical fanners at" negotiating for the purchase of the To t Rangitumau Estate, and its .sale w II probably be recorded shortly (slates an ■ exchange). For purposes of closer settler ment tliere is no more suitable property ) in the Wairarapa, and the Government > has been repeatedly urged to acquire it. An Ashburton fanner brought into . the town recently a sugar-bag three- | parts tun 01 grass grub ueelies, which ; had been gaLheml up alter a small lire 01 gin-.-.' unii'ii u.iu Ijcpii made in tlie Lagiuhur district tor the purpose of de-1 stroying the beetles. But another farmer seems to have "gone one better. He declares that he lighted a small tire in the evening, and liie hectics »erjt, attracted to the dailies in such numbers that they extinguished the tire—almost! Backblock roads seem to provide a source of income if they are sufficiently overgrown with grass. But thev also provide their little troubles. J low tlie Kiwitea County Council were "taken in ■over a grass-seed deal was related by the chairman at the last meeting, me seed 011 a certain road was sold for ±'lo, but the supposed purchaser subsequently stated that he had written out the tender for a man who could not write, and had inadvertently signed his own name. He had never n'ad anything to do with the grass-seed, nor had the man for whom he had written [out the tender, and it would be hard on him it he had to pay the £lO. It was decided by the council not to enforce payment under the circumstances,

The advances made by the > tural Bank of Queensland have reach"d nearly a quarter of a million or mumiy ihe total amount applied lor last year ran up to nearly £IOO,OOO. The bank i- had been in operation lor about eHit )• years, and a number of the original •- borrowers are now beginning to pay ; back ninety-six having repaid last year, i- Ihe Act has been widened to enable ad- [. vances to be made to selectors or n-i-iz-ing farms and goldlields homesteads (both leaseholds'), and to enable stock to be purchased. The absence of shelter belts in the country surrounding llawera is -vt:v marked (says the Dominion). This is the more remarkable because the day is not long past when Hawera lived on sheep, lit is well known that shelter greatly affects the welfare of all stock particularly sheep, and one wonders that' the old sheep-farmers of .bgniont did not provide that inexpensive but profitable adjunct to their holdings. Perhaps in the days when wool counted as everything, and lamb and mutton was merely the raw material of tallow, shelter to protect the lambs went for nothing. Indeed, it may even haye been held that the piercing blasts sweeping in from the Taranaki Bight would cause tin: sheep to grow their wool the faster. | Whatever be the explanation, the need of rectifying the omission must now be apparent. Those are days of compulsory high farming" because of high land prices. Hawera land' is among the dearest of the dear, and it is not high farm|ing to let the cows huddle together at nights—and days—under the thin "protection" of wire fences. It is not high farming to lay open every crop that is grown to be swept and battered and laid by the salt storm lor want, ot bieakwinds. is it ordinary human comfort to have to work in those con-1 ditions. Adequate sheltor bolts on ai 1 la weiti dairy farm might easily add •from -,£2 to £A a head to the annual produce of the herd, and that would be all profit. It would almost pav the refit. Exactly io what extent a proper proportion of insignis shelter belts on the plains of Egmont could keep the great dairying industry supplied wuii box timber is a matter of simple (-adulation for the factories conceited. Ami there is still need for further tests as to the fitness of this wood for the purpose. But in the meantime the progressive dairymen of that fertile district could very well do worse than enquire into the question of shelter belts, and probably by the time they have reached the tree-planting stage the box tests will be decisive. It is worth thinking about,

A Brydon (Invercargill) settler, Mr. R. Craig, -who is at present milking it cows, possesses ratlior a notable one. She is of the Ayrshire breed, is 17 vt.-n----old, and has given birth to 14 calves. When still a heifer, fourteen days before calving she gave three buckets of milk daily, and before calving this season she had to be milked three timet a day, now yielding eight gallon-) of milk daily. This anirfial atone brings in a monthly return of £4 10s, and Mr. Craig says' that she is one of the best cows he has ever possessed.

The recent fall in the .North Island prices of fat pigs lias somewhat <l:i the ardour of the dairy farmers who had been contemplating greater ntlcntion |o pig-raising. Some hope, however, is to lie derived from the fact that pig-raising in Britain and America has experienced a remarkable diminution during the last yfftr or two. This diminution foreshadows' an early scarcity of that <-las» of meat. It is held among some of our farmers in the pig-raising districts thai good prospects are held out for exporting the carcases frozen, and some ot tliem will try their fortunes in this direction. -Mr. Donald, tile well-known Wairarapa dairy farmer, told a "Dominion" reporter that lie will send Home 200 frozen Berkshire baconers this season.

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