FARM AND DAIRY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 221, 24 January 1911, Page 7

FARM AND DAIRY

USEFUL FACTS. Watch the fences and repair the weak places. Prevent the first outbreak and | ihe (lock will -easily be controlled. Business capacity is an absolute necesjsily on the farm while a liking for hard ; work is also desirable in a successful j farmer. In selecting a brood mare remember that constitution, soundness, and type are of even greater importance than pedigree. The careful farmer and stockman invariably investigates any new proposition touching the method of conducting farm or station lite. In consequence of drainage from the manure heap, there is an enormous waste i all over the country of the liquid portion—the most valuable—of the heap. It is to the advantage both of the cow and the quality of the milk that the milking times should be separated by equal intervals, and this ought to be aimed at as far as possible. Inasmuch as the quality of milk is regulated by the individual cow rather than "by the feed fed, the dairyman must look to each animal if he is desirous of producing milk of a high quality. The colt should be taught what is required of it in a manner that will give j it confidence in man, and yet convince it that man is its master. To do this without hurting the animal requires skill, patience and good judgment; but the re--1 suit repays the trouble. The London correspondent of the Pas- [ toralists' Review states that a meat salesman remarked to him: "It has been quite a pleasure this year to sell frozen meat; everything has worked so smoothly. As it arrived meat was marketed—no accumulations in store." The same gentleman continued: "Butchers are buying cheap beef as much as possible in place of dear mutton and dearer lamb. Canterbury lamb off the hooks is 4s per stone. Australian meat is expected here in December in large quantities. Tlie delay in the shipments has allowed the New Zealand season to close here grandly. The price of Australian,lamb, to arrive next week, is 3s 6d per stone. Prospects for New Zealand meat at Smithfield next year are as they were at the beginning of this year —favorable, a clean sheet, as regards stocks. At the begiMning of 100!) the market was full of stale New Zealand lambs."

To get the best results from the ensuing lactation period, a dairy cow should be dry for a period of eight or nine weeks before calving. Making a stereotyped model for breeding to is impossible, but no man lives who studies his breed who has not an ideal sheep before him. One cross may answer, but in the end cross-breeding becomes a very complicated affair and has ruined more than one iloek of sheep. In the carefully prepared crop estimates issued by the British Board of Agriculture on account of the longer growing claims to be ''the predominant partner" in the Triune Kingdom of Great Britain. :fn fact (says the North British Agriculturalist), Scotland leads the way in all but the growing of oats, where England has a clear lead. In wheat, for instance, while England grew only an average of 31.10 bushels per acre and gallant little Wales an average of 28.19' bushels per acre, the "land of the mountain and flood" came out with an average of 38.33 bushels per acre. In all other crops of grain, legumes, and hay, Scotlaud had an equally clear lead, with the one solitary exception of oats. It is not very clear why it is that England should persistently keep the lead of Scotland in the growing of oats, but the- probable reason is that in Scotland many poor lands are under steady cultivation. A Wcraroa farmer stated to a Levin Chronicle representative that be did not remember such a year as the present for j grass crops. "\ have put more land under the plough th«« in any previous year, and yet 1 have,-mpfe grass than at any period during the time I have occupied this land." " Blight is spreading to rape in some districts in Canterbury. Caterpillar, are also doing a lot of damage, and the sparrows are looking after the grain in preference to devouring caterpillars. About Cheviot the small birds' pest is loudly complained of, and some early crops have suffered badly from this cause.