FARM & DAIRY

Taranaki Daily News, 17 May 1919, Page 10

FARM & DAIRY

In. an American paper recently I came 1 across a queer news item that will pro- ' bably be read with a certain amount of interest by New Zealand farmers. This concerned the big loss caused to pig raisers by the birth of hairless pigs. Of course, the fact that a pig is born hairless is no particular detriment in itself, but the trouble is that these monstrosities, though born of normal weight, and generally carried the full gestation period, only live a few hours, or at most, days. Wisconsin is a sufferer from this trouble, and in Montana it is said that from 100,000 to a million hairless pigs are born—only to die prematurely —every year.

The Chicago Breeders' Gazette, in its report of the draught horse show in Chicago in December, stated that a number of Army officers stood at the Percheron ringside to admire and praise the ancestral type fVom whioh Bprang the satisfactory grade horses that their artillery and transport units in Europe drew for their gruelling work. It was their stereotyped claim that grade Percherons were the best motive power to use in European mire, across shell-torn hills and valleys, and under open sky mud-bedded picket-line stabling condi- ! tions. Major Henry Leonard publicly I voiced the Army observations at the Percheron Society banquet. He added the further encouragement of assurance that the best breeding horses of the Perche district have been preserved. The inferior horses were turned over to the War Department to be consumed eventually in the world conflict. This has left the breed none the worse so far as its heat representatives are concerned. One of the disadvantages from which Australian wool has suffered in the European markets in the past (says' the Queenslander) has been the presence of foreign fibres in the fleeces', derived either from the twine with which the fleeces were tied, or from the jute packs surrounding the bales. These fibres reduce the value of the wool, and give a good deal of trouble to the manufacturers. Man}- remedies have been suggested, principal among which have ibeen the substitution of woollen string for the hemp twine used in tying the fleeces, and the lining of the bales with paper, or the use of a jute pack with a thin inner lining of wool woven into the jute :n such a manner that the contents cannot come in contact with the jute. The last suggestion wag an excellent one, and worked well in practice, but it did not get beyond the experimental stage owing to the cost of the packs being too great. Woollen string has answered for the fleeces, and has been adopted in some cases, but some growers have objected to that also oh the score of expense.

Two hundred thousand farmers (remarks an American paper) are devoting their continuous labor to feeding rats. That labor, directed rightly, would feed many thousand hungry, war-cursed people and would nerve the arms of thousands of our boys in khaki to shoot straighter and faster. Estimating that a flill-grown rat devours and fouls from 40 to 50 pounds of food a year, it is figured by the men of statistical inclination that it requires the labor of 150,000 farmers to keep them supplied. Moreover, it is estimated that they annually destroy property that it would require the labor of 50,000 men to produce. Perhaps this is the most startling statistical enforcement of the cost of rat maintenance that has ever been presented. It proves again what a remarkably large total can be rolled up out of a lot of little items. It is easy to put up with them, it is not easy to exterminate them. But among the compensations of war time should be the practical extirpation of rodents. It would prove a profitable job, systematically set about. It is stated that the British Ministry of Food had begun to fine farmers heavily "for failing to take reasonable precautions against rats, mice, rooks, and jackdaws."