LIME & STOCK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1938, Page 3

LIME & STOCK

ADEQUATE SUPPLY ESSENTIAL. Not only is the use of lime sometimes neglected altogether, but where it is used the amount applied is quite often inadequate. At Rothamsted Experimental Farm in England, where exhaustive experiments have been conducted to ascertain the amount of lime leached from the soil, it has been found that the average loss is 8001 b of lime per acre per annum on arable land, but rather less on grassland. Very similar results were obtained in American experiments. This amount would be returned to the soil in 15 cwt of ordinary ground limestone as usually used in this country. On the clay lands a ton of lime to the acre should be the initial dressing and at least quarter of a ton a year after that. It is not only the leaching that has to be made good. A yield of, say, 75001 b of 4 per cent milk in a year, or 3001 b of butterfat, contains 131 b of lime. But to give this in the milk a cow would take double the amount from the soil. This means that a cow giving the above production would take from the soil 2Glb of lime, or 461 b of carbonate of lime. Then there is the lime required for the

skeleton of the calf. In view of these facts where is the farmer who neglects lime going to finish? He certainly is not going to get maximum production from his herd or rear vigorous calves, while he is definitely inviting disease.