FARMING ITEMS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1091, 10 April 1883, Page 3

FARMING ITEMS.

The Waimate Times mentions that eight acres of wheat in the Waimate district yielded 700 bushels, being at the rate of 87 bushels to the acre.

The Lyttelton Times states that in a days threshing of 13£ hours, Mr Muirhead, on Mr Millar's Winchmore farm, near Ashburton, got through, with a Clayton and Shuttleworth machiue, 2828 bushels of oats in a crop that went 62 bushels to the acre.

The last quarterly ogricultural returns of Great Britain disclosed the fact that pig breeding had increased to an enormous extent in England during the year, the actual increase during 1882 having been 22£ per cent. The fact is not looked upon in a favorable light, but rather as a symptom of the urgent want of capital. Swine cost less than sheep and cattle, and they return their cost more quickly. They are the poor man's live stock. In this instance, however, they help to counterbalance the decline in sheep. When rape is intended for seed it should o V h? sown on the best land f rora the middle of February to the middle of March, so as to give it a long time to open in the ensuing summer. Should weeds spring up early in autumn the crop may be lightly fe.l off with sheep, but no stock should ever be left on it after June. The crop will flower in the following September and October, and in December the seed will ripen, when it may be cut with a combined reaper and binder, or by a iidedelivery machine. As the seed is very likely to shed, care must be taken to cut it in early morning or in the evening. The damage caused to the grain all over the Wanganui district by the late heavy rains is nnnh more serious (says the Yeoman) than at first supposed, and instead of the losses to farmers being reckoned by hundreds they may be set down in thousands. Whole stacks of grain have been soaked through and rendered useless. All over the ceantry stacks are to be seen with their tops growing green, while others hard been opened up and the sheaves spread out to dry. Other farmers, again who had not carted in their grain from the threshing machine, have spread it out as best they could in barns or sheds, but all more or less damaged. One flour mill is stopped for want of wheat, no suitable sample being in the meantime procurable. All this damage might have been averted by the precaution being taken of covering the stacks with thatch, but the harvest weather of previous seasons has shown no reason for taking this step, and many a farmer has learned a lesson for the future at the expense of a bitter experience.

A writer in a leading American agricultural journal gives his experience as follows in the treatment of horses with split hoofs :—Cut a seat for screwhead about fin from the hair, and back from the split about £in or fin. Cut till it appears soft. Sometimes the blood starts a little. JN T ow bore through across the crack with a good gimlet, so as to strike the opposite wall of hoof as near the surface as possible, and not have the point of the screw show ; put in a slim inch screw, and draw the walls together. Be careful not to split or injure the screw for you can't get it out. Now, if the split is far enough down to admit of it, cut m a similar manner another seat for screwhead immediately below, And put in a larger screw, as the wall is thicker below. Don't use a bit, for the horse is liable to stamp and break it. Use a gimlet, aud wheu the horse moves let go the gimlet and no harm is done. If a horse is restive

have hi-s opposite foot held up. After screws have been in a day or two you can give them one or two more and then they will remain tight, A neighbor of mine, nearly thirty years ago, nought .a horse that hrl been foundered, ami the walls ot his hoofs were thick, and one was cracked from top to bottom. Tuey kept a clasp upon it, but when the clasp got loose it would work and bleed, when screws were put in as I have endeavored to describe — three 2in large size wood screws, and when the hoof grew oft all was sound, arid remained' so. I have wished a long litre to give this remedy to the public* Have tried it successfully on six or eight of my own horses, and on my neighbors' horses, and have never tailed. Remember that the wall of a hoof is thick enough to admit a screw ; and if the hoof does, not work it won't crack any more. _______