NOTES OF INTEREST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1938, Page 3

NOTES OF INTEREST

VARIOUS DOMINION ITEMS. Electric Farming. A completely electric farm with power gadgets doing most of the work from field to kitchen promises to be one of the most interesting exhibits at the New York World's Fair in 1939. The electric farm will be operating full blast when the fair opens, with crops and fruit trees growing and dairy cattle, poultry, and bees well settled in their ultra-modern abodes in the shadow of New York's skyline. Hens will work overtime in electri-cally-lighted laying houses; cows will be fed, watered, and milked by electricity. Hotbeds, electrically heated, will sprout seeds and grow plants which later will be transplanted into a garden where an electrically-oper-ated irrigation system will keep them growing at full vigour. Faulty Fleece Skirting. A visit to a wool store should suffice to convince anyoije of the seriousness of faulty work in the important matter of skirting the fleece. It is no uncommon thing to see half an ottering consisting of brokens and pieces, and for no apparent reason. Too often this work, which should be in the hands of trained men, is performed by casual shed hands, who may never have seen or handled a fleece. Of course the classer is blamed but it should be remembered that he has a difficult job in a busy shed. How much easier would be his work if skirting were carried out by men trained to the job. The worse of the fault is in overskirting. Much wool is taken off the fleece quite unnecessarily. The consequence is that the owner loses, in prices paid, the difference between the value given for the lower grades and his fleece prices. Sheep owners should insist that men entrusted with the work on the tables should have had experience. The classer, too, should give clear instructions on the correct method of skirting the fleeces from each flock. Taking Goats Seriously.

Only the poor and the rich take goats seriously (says an American exchange). For the poor they provide a dependable and economical supply of milk that can be produced from the grass around the yard. The rich keep them for the superior quality of their milk and to add a rural touch to the landscapes of their great estates. But the nanny goat, neither humble nor proud about her business of producing two kids a year and, in the case of the better does four quarts of milk daily. She has done her job so well that there are today in the United States something like 5,000,000 goats. Three-quarters of the 20,000,000 lb of milk they produce each is consumed by drinking. The remainder goes into cheese. J. C. Macquardt, of Geneva, New York, an authority on goats, describes their milk as more nearly approaching human milk than any other food.

Sterility and Abortion. Dr. Hammond expresses the opinion that 30 of every 100 cows went out of a herd either through sterility or abortion. In recent years there had been a terriffic amount of contagious abortion in herds in England, and sterility followed as a natural result. If abortion could be eliminated from herds, a great deal of sterility would go with it. Some breeders were now building up “free” herds and would not buy a cow unless it had passed a certain prescribed test. Bulls also played a big part in introducing sterility in herds, just in the same way as rams affected ewes. A young bull over-used and under-fed often "went off.” An old bull "went off” for exactly the opposite reason: It was often over-fed and under-worked. “Drainage Essential.”

On the heavy soils it is essential that drainage be attended to wherever there is evidence of the nccesssity for such work, states the’ New Zealand Journal of Agriculture. No amount of surface cultivation or fertilisers will give maximum results on a poorly drained soil. There are thousands of acres in many districts where drainage is noticeably deficient. Drainage operations are often expensive, but there is no farm operation that has in the long run such an influence on crop production, and often the influence on animal health is most marked. Changing Fertiliser Practice. In combined drilling the fertiliser is concentrated in rows so that the process definitely cuts across the generally accepted English tradition that all fertilisers should be distributed as evenly as possible. Similar departures from tradition are taking place in other directions. In potato growing, for example, the concentration of manure in the drills has been shown lo be advantageous, and many different machines for the purpose are available. In fact, states S. J. Wright, i in a British farming journal, jf mod- | ern research follows the lines which i seem probable at present, the prinI ciple of even sowing may be entirety I given up. and all our present means ! of distributing manures may be renI dered obsolete.