COST OF FENCING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 December 1938, Page 3

COST OF FENCING

SHEEP ON DAIRY FARMS. DIFFERENT METHODS ADVOCATED. What prevents many dairy farmers from running a few sheep for fat lamb raising is, perhaps, the cost of fencing, states a writer in an Australian exchange. However, fencing a dairy farm to hold sheep, he says, when it is already securely fenced for cattle is not so expensive as some people seem to think. In the first place, there is no need to make the whole farm sheep-proof. The area that will be necessary or advisable to fence will depend entirely upon the nature of the country and the number of sheep it is proposed to carry. If his farm be not already heavily overstocked with cattle, the dairy farmer should not reduce returns from his herd one single penny by carrying one breeding ewe, or even up to one and a half or two sheep for every cow.

One way of keeping sheep is’ to hold them crowded the whole time on the minimum area required to feed them, which is the only part of the farm to be surrounded with a sheep-proof fence. This is the wrong way—the way that is sure to cut down the cream cheque, because it take? away land from the cows.. Sheep should be used, not simply held, on the dairy farm. Worked properly, they can play a useful part in the system of rotational grazing. The grazing requirements of about eight breeding ewes are the same as for one milking cow; similarly, eight dry sheep take about the same grass as one dry beast. At this rate, if 50 ewes are to be locked up on the minimum area required to feed them, on land, say, that carries one cow to 2J acres, they will be taking 16 acres from the herd. THE BETTER METHOD. The better way is to fence in for the sheep two or more of the cow fields adjoining one another, continues the Australian authority. The sheep can then be moved from one to the other of these fields with the dry stock after the best of the grass has been fed off by the dairy herd. The sheep, feeding low, will compel the dry stock to clean up the longer roughage. Also, the sheep will graze where the cows’ droppings have fallen, utilising at its best stage grass that would otherwise go to waste.

Cattle in the same way will feed after sheep. Sheep are the greatest weeders, keeping the paddocks very clean of weeds. A very important reason for having at least two paddocks is the need for keeping ewe lambs away from the rams in the mating season. A well-grown ewe lamb is litable to get in lamb at six months of age; it is just as undesirable to have this happen as it is to get dairy heifers in calf at six months.

Ewes of the two horned breeds—the Merino and the Dorset Horn—will mate at any time of the year. Other breeds and crossbreds, however, will mate only in the autumn, from about the middle of February to about the middle of April, dropping their lambs in the spring.