FOLDING SHEEP.

Waikato Times, Volume XIV, Issue 1191, 14 February 1880, Page 2

FOLDING SHEEP.

Durino the present and next months many of our Waiaato settlers will be busy preparing their land for turnip sowinv, and many more would be so engaged, doubtless, but for the difficulty of economically consuming the orop upon the ground by sheep. When a nook is allowed to run over a whole field, there is a la~ge amou-.t of waste, and a very large proportion of the produce destroyed. Hurdles are expensive? in the first iustanco, and uu>

less taken great care of coon become de- j strayed. They take, too, a con&id&rable amount of handling- and shifting. Rope netting is more easily handled, but it is expensive and soon requires mending. A. far more simple, less costly, aud more durable fence, which can be easily shif ted for folding purposes, has been successfully used in the Province of Canterbury— we say fence — for really it in a simple wire fence, but under certain novel conditions that is used. Supposing then, that a settler has a large field of turuip3 which he desires to feed oft' in sections, he will procure two strong straining posts, which he will place, one at each side of the field, where be may desire the dividing fence to cross it. I hose he will fix strongly in with stays inside. He will then possess himself of a supply of good stakes, say one for every nine or ten feet of the length of the proposed fence. 'these may be made of light sawn stuff, or ti-tree or birch, with one side flattened to present a good face to the wires. The stakes are then placed in the line of the fen c, the square face then being turned towards the portion of the field where the sheep are to be penned. Say that seven wires are used, there would require to be fourteen staples on each stake, and seven straining brackets fixed on each end post above referred to. The reason of the fourtee ' staples to each sta^e is thus ex plained and indeed in it lies the possibility of using a wire at all for a fence to be shifted from place to place. Two staples are used to each wire, driven not in the ordinary way over the wird, one point of the sb iple being in a vertical line with the other, but the reverse way about half an inch or less apart, one immediately above the other. Jhe wire is then laid between the two staples resting on the lower one, and the stapKs are only driv n so far in t at they project sufficiently in frout of the wire, to allow a piece of straight wire to be run perpendicularly down through the entire fourteen, thus bolting the seven horizontal wires between tht stake and the straight wire or bolt. W hen the fence is shifted these bolts are withdrawn, and the wires at once come from between the staples, while the stakes still stapled are ready for use when shifted back. The difficulty of removing the fence has been made very simple by the construction of a small sledge on the two ends of which a cross tree is to be fixed something like an ordinary sawing horse, and a piece of 4in. by 4in scantling, trimmed off at the ends, serves as an axle on which a drum is constructed, and on whioh the wire is wound. The drum is 2^- feet in diameter, and the cross arms are allowed to project so as to prevent the wire coming off the ends of the drum. When the fence is shifted the two end posts are put down firmly as before, the stakes placed in position, and one end of a wire fastened on, and the drum is taken along the line, the wire being laid between each pair of staples on each stane, till all the wires are in position, when the bolts are passed downwards through each seven pairs of staples on each stake, the wires are stretched at the other end post, and the fence is erected again. A slight bend in the one end of the straight wire us d as a bolt prevents its dropping. A couple of men it is said, can remove and fix again eighteen or tw- nty chains of such a fence in tess than half a day, the principal labour being the taking up and putting securely down the two large straining posts at either extreme end. The same fence could be made use of for dividing grass paddocks, at other seasons when not required for folding sheep or green crops. We have gone minutely into the description of this fence, believing that it would facilitate the work of soiling sheep or turnips or rape. What is needed so much on most of our Waikato soil, is animal manure, and consolidation and folding sheep upon crops of turnips, rape, rye, or other green feed efiioets both objects. Every acre thus treated is bronght at once, and per. manently into good heart.