SHEEP AND WHEAT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 169, 27 May 1879, Page 2

SHEEP AND WHEAT.

The following should be of interest to the settlers of this district The valuo of sheep in connection with wheat-raising, says the Willamette farmer, is too well established to need argument, but we hear of instances so directly in point, that we cannot do our farmer readers a greater service than to mention them. John Pugli had a piece of fall wheat that promised largely, and yet he was advised to put his sheep on it, which he concluded not to do. The wheat grew remarkably, there was heavy straw and the yield was twenty bushels per acre. It is evident that the sheep would have cropped down the heavy growth, added richness to the soil, and insured less straw and double the amount of wheat, or at least a much heavier yield. So he thinks, and no doubt correctly. W. J. Warren tells us of a caso over in Polk country, near Bethel, where two neighbors had fields of wheat on similar soil, and in all respects but one with similar cultivation. One—Mr Keyte —last spring put sheep on his wheat, and let them crop it quite close. Some of his neighbors predicted that he was ruined, but he realised G1 bushels to the acre, while his neighbor, who let the rank growth mature, got only half yield. Dan Clark near Salem, has a small field that was in potatoes, and as the growth was rank last spring he let hogs and stock run on it until the wheat seemed almost exterminated. It was his intention to re-sow it, but as other work claimed his attention lie deferred it nntil it appeared that there would be wheat enough come up. The result is that it is. the best wheat he has. It is evidently true that good wheatfarming cannot be done without.sheep, for their utility on summer-fallow is beyond question, j A