DANGEROUS GREEN FOOD FOR HORSES AND CATTLE.

Waikato Times, Volume VII, Issue 370, 26 September 1874, Page 2

DANGEROUS GREEN FOOD FOR HORSES AND CATTLE.

Recently Mr lost two c;irt horses worth £150— one was found dead and distended in the morning, the other died the course of the day, and another person lost two cows. Young green tares, espec Lilly when cut immediately after rain, aie most dangerous, with the ordinary mode of placing them befuie animals in unlimited quantity as cut by the scythe. The losses caused by this system in their annual' total must be enormous. 'For 30 years we have avoided such losses by invariably passing all green food, tares, grass, Italian rye-grass, clover, and green beans through the chaff cutter. According to the condition of its growth we mix. more or less fine-cut str.iv or hny chaff' with it. This absorbs its superfluous moisturo, and pi-events flatulence,, distension, and death. The same principle t^ pulped roots — pulped cabbnge. kohl rabi, mangel — the, latter being most dangerous early in the season unless so admixed. The cost of doing all this is a trifle as compared with the serious losses occasioned by its omission. The value of a «higloanimalwouldpaytheextracostforsevera] years. In fact, I have long since arrived at the conclusion that the turning out, roaming at large, and whole food system will be given up by those who prefer profit to loss. Over-ripe foods, either tares or clover, which are tough and indigestable require comminution. Of course in such a case, being deficient rather than over full of moisture, they do not require straw chaff, or at all events very little of it. If horses are to have water it should be before eating green tares in a wet state, not after. Bean meal should be intermixed with or attached to the cut food in the manger, so that the animals cannot take it unmixed. Our horses coming in from work ara not allowed to drink cold water until after having eaten a little manger food. Where brewers' have warm water they drink at wilL.Changes from old customs are often not easy, for ploughmen orhorsekeepersarediificulttobeconvei-tedwheremore care and more work are require!. A ploughmanh'nds it much easier to turn his horses into a field of nice clover and so spoil much of it, instead of having to cut it, bring it home, and pass it through the chaff cutter, and then mix it with other food. Youths glowing up with the modern practice would naturally adopt it without objection, but it is difficult to convert old hands,- and one must in such cases be firmly resolute. — y. J. Mechi.

It is not to be expected that farmers generally will become poultry fanciers, in the usual meaning of that teun, nor do we think it desirable they should. But there is no place where poultry can bo kept moio cheaply, or with more profit, than on farms, if a reasonable amount of care be exercised. There is little difficulty in having a return of, say £25 per ) oar, from the poultry kept on the farm, with comparatively little cost — these returns being partly in the amount received for product sold, and partly, perhaps chiefly, in the value of the product used on the farm. Fowls eat as much on the farm as elsewhere, but much they consume would be lost did they not get it, and a large part of their food is made up of that which is of no value, and perhaps positively injurious to the farmer. As a rule, they are more healthful on farms than where more closely confined. These and other reasons can readily be named why farmers should find their poultry yielding a larger net profit than those who live in villages or cities. Yet, as a rule, this result does not follow ; and this largely from a lack of care on the part of the farmers. To allow chickens to be hatched at such times as suits the convenience of the hens ; to kill for eating the earliest hatched and the best; to allow the weeding out pr-ocess, aside from this killing, to be carried on by death from natural causes or disease, to give no attention whatever to breeding— these are not the best means of securing success ; and yet they are often adopted by formers. That somo of tho improved breeds are superior to tho average common fowl is evident, and wo sco no reason why farmers should not avail themselves of the advantage — selecting one breed, and gradually working into this until the wholo stock is of this kind. — Colonist. A note of warning has lately been sounded that tho practice of cutting seaweed prevalent on our ' English .coasts deprives fisJi of the harbouiage pro- 1 vided for them by nature, and in the end may drive them from tho shores of England. This danger is said to be imminent along tho coast of South De\on and Cornwall, where seaweed cutting has becomo a lccognistd branch of trade owing to agricultural d'jjnaiuls for the article as manure.

Some careful experiments have been made at Bangalore, during the just two years, in testing ihe. H value of the sunflower (helianthus annuus) iWaH cultivated plant. Colonel Boddam, who has wade H these experiments, reports that the seed used lias H boen importe I Gianb Russian seed, which are double H the size of ordinary country seed. Six pounds of H this Avere sown in drills one yard apart, on AugustM 29, 1873, and the plants were harvested from DecenwH 29, 1873, to Januaiy 1, 1874. They were seven to H eight fest in height, each bearing one largo head ; H the largest of six taken from a plot of average growth H was 35 inches in circumference, weighed 31b, and H contained 1875 seeds. The others ranged from 29 ■ to 25 inches in circumference, averaging about lib H weight, and varying from 1,000 to 1,400 seeds. The ■ leaves were sun-dried and pounded, and realised about I 5001b of dry fodder, which when used mixed with I meal, bran, &c.; is very good food for milch cows ; I it will, moreover, keep good for a long time. The I seed after being husked was converted into co.use H meal, which was preserved for the oil — fifty seeis of I the meal yeilding three gallons of oil and 3.011 > of B oilcake. Colonel Boddam says that the empty .seed I heads and stalks make fine fuel, which subsequently I yields lOcwt of ashes very rich in potash, excellent ■ manure for coffee and tobacco. I It takes no more time to pick off a HtHe appld^i I the summer than it doe.s to pick the same npple in the I fall — and with me the fall is the busiest .season of ■ the year. I used to think that thinning fruit was I one of the refinements of horticulture which those I of us who grow fruit largely for maiket could not I fetop to bother trith. But a friend's experience con- I vinced me of my error. If there are 2,000 apples I on a tree in the summer, and I let them grow, 1 1 have to pick them in the fall If this is as many I again apples as the tree ought to bear, the 2,000 ■ apples would fill, sny fh c barrels, Now, if I pick I off 1,000 of the smallest, and poorest and speckcHjH and wormy apples in the summer, the probabilities ■ are that the 1,000 left on the tree would giow so I much larger that they would fill five barrels as I before. We pick 2,000 apples in either case, and I get the same amount of fruit. What, then, do we I gain 1 ? In the- first place, the 1,000 apples do not exhaust the tree as much as the 2,000. There is os much fruit by measure, but it consists largely of material that takes little from the tree or the soil. There is only half as much seed, &c. We ought to thin out at least enough to leave the tree strength enough to bear a full crop the next year. In 4P second place, the 1,000 apples are worth much more than the 2^000 ; and last, but not least, the trees will bear every year. We do not remember to have seen the case stated in a manner more concise or I convincing. — Agriculturist. I A very singular instance of Dimorphism in the I Rose has recently occurred in a nursery at Lyons, I where a specimen of rosa polyantha, a Japanese I non-perpetual species, with climbing shoots, and single rose coloured flowers, bore, in the fiist place, a number of double flowers, and also produced fiom seed a number of plants entirely different from the parent. These are all dwaif in habit, and not climbing ; some of them, in fact, growing only an inch or two high. Their flowers are mostly double, :uid of various colours — white, red, and jeljow. These varieties will, no doubt, bo found useful for covering the bare spaces under specimen slnubs, the surface of flower beds, &c. Too little attention h.^ been given to this accessary embellishment, and many a fine conifer may be seen in our public and private gardens, the aspect of which would be vastly I improved, if the usually naked eiicle of earth in I which it stands were giacefully clothed -with some I sort of verdure. I