OUTSIDE NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 November 1921, Page 7

OUTSIDE NOTES.

(Observations by W.R.W.) i Palmerston—the Premier Show, from an attendance and entries point of view—was successful, but very* few Taranaki men were present. There is a feeling abroad that shows have seen their beat days, except the side ones, which were never so numerous before. The show pedigree sale revealed an awful slump, red poll bulls excepted (owing to the high testing qualities of their dams). About 32 Jersey bulls were offered, and two sold at low values. 30 and 24 guineas, considering their breeding. Bull after bull was passed with out a bid, when Mr. Abraham called out, “Bring in that pedigree Tam worth boar; perhaps they’ll bid for him.” Grass in the Manawatu is coming on splendidly, but in the Waikato, where they have had the worst spring for 50 years, it is getting too long, and in the Hauraki it looks ' like beating the cows, and only those who know the swamp can realise what feed there means. A shipment of 200 head of store cattle has come to the latter place from the North, and is causing great alarm, owing to the prevalence of tick. Reliable men who have just been through the North of Auckland assure me it is something very serious up there, and nothing but absolute prohibition* of imports will do any good. The Waitoa milk powder factory is in full swing. Already £160,000 has been spent; over twenty large bungalows have been built for the men. also dining rooms and a lounge hall is being erected. Fancy Taranaki cockies building halls for their factory hands! In Hamilton, the price of freezing beef is practically settled at £1 per 1001 b -for prime ox: secondary and cow to he boiled down -or tinned. This is not healthy reading, but horses have slumped worse than cattle, if that, is any consolation to cattle raisers. People who have dehorned their bullocks will now reap their reward, as no meat with horn rips or bruises will go through, and a grazier who counts his stuff in thousands told us that he sent in last autumn in a special train 280 head, and about 50 were uninjured. Some extra tight-fisted farmers —and