FARM, GARDEN, AND ORCHARD NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue XXXII, 9 March 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

FARM, GARDEN, AND ORCHARD NOTES.

A Valuable Sire.—The influence of one good sire is scarcely estimable, but in the Live Stock Journal Almanac for 18S7 Mr W. Burdett-Coutts, M.l\, calculates that the celebrated hackney stallion, Triffit's Fireaway, represents in his stock a money value of £250,000. fie is now rising thirty years old, and has been at the stud for over twenty-five years. He has averaged over 100 foals a year, the last prices of which arc given at £100 each. So great is his influence that his stock can be recognised at sight, and an instance is given of foals got by him out of a cart mare which, as live-year-olds, were sold by London dealers at 300gs to 400 us the pair.

Barward Manure : The Profitableness of Covering It.—A Scotch farmer and landowner has shown by experiment that covered manure increased the productiveness of his land enough the first year he used it to pay the cost of routrh t-heds put up to protect it. Four acres of good laud were measured oft; two of them were manured with ordinary barnyard manure, and the other two with an equal quantity of manure from the covered shed. The whole was planted in potatoes. The two acres manured with barnyard manure, which had beeu exposed to the weather, yielded 561 bu-heN of potatoes, while the other two acres manured with covered manure yielded 913 bushels, or 451 bushels more thau the other. The increased effect of the covered manure did not cease with the lir.-t year. The next year both plots were sown with wheat, and from the two acres dressed with the barnyard manure 00 bushels of wheat were harvested, while from the two acres dressed with the covered manure 108 bushels of wheat were obtained. These facts show the importance of protecting the barn manure from the weather.

A Chapter ox Moles.—A mule is always worth 25 per cent, more than a hor.-e, because 50 par cent, better. Close acquaintance with mules for about five years has taught me this fact. They are really moie docile tliau horses, are hardier, do more work, eat Ipss, and thrive upon coarser fare ; are never sick unless shamefully ill-used or ill-fed ; live longer and are more useful while they live. I never saw a mule team run away. Mules rarely stumble ou the roughest roads, are scarcely ever balky and will pull heavy lo ids as steadily as oxen, hanging on in the traces with all their weight, without any jerks or giving back. Consequently the haruess lasts longer than with horses. They may be made as kind in disposition as horses by the same kind treatment. A pair of young mules, coming three years old, which I have raised, will come when I whistle for them from the far end of a 100-acre pasture lot, will eat corn or take salt from my hand, will enjoy petting as much as the horse colts, and have never yet lifted a foot to kick. The mule is made vicious by vicious treatmeut; it has the patience, hardiness, abstemiousness of the aes, with the strength and intelligence of the horse, There is money in rearing mules and economy in using them anywhere.—New York Tribune.

To Cork Nervous Horses.—Finely bred, intelligent horses, are very ofteu nervous. They are quick to notice, quick to take alarm, quick to do what seems to them, in moments of sudden tenor, necessary to escape from possible harm from something they do not understand. That is what makes them shy, bolt and run away. We cannot tell what awful suggestions strange things oiler to their minds. For aught we can tell, a sheet of white paper in the road may seem to the nervous horse a yawning chasm, the open front of a baby carriage the jaws of a dragon ready to devour him, and a man 011 a bicycle some terrifying sort of a flying devil without wines. Hut we find that the moment lie becomes familiar with those things or any other that ail'iight him, and knows what they are, lie grows indifferent to them. Therefore, when your horse shies at anything, make him acquainted with it ; let him smell it, touch it with his sensitive upper lip, and look closely at it. Remember, too, that you must familiarise both sides of him with the dreaded object. If he only examines it with the near nostril and eye, he will be very likely to scare at it when it appears on his off side. So then rattle your paper, beat your bass drum, flutter your umbrella, run your baby carriage and your bicycle, fire your pistol and clatter your tinware on both sides of him and all around him until ho comes to regard the noise simply as a nuisance and the material objects as only trivial thing's liable to get hurt if they are in hU way. Ho may not learn all that in one lesson, but ooutiuue the lesson and you will cure all his nervousness.—Horseman.

Treatment ok Barnyard Manure.— The proper treatment of the barnyard is a maeter of pecuniary interest to the farmer. Professor Weber, in a recent report issued by the Ohio State on agriculture, says on this subject:—l. The stable floor should be impervious to water,"and may l« made of concrete, clay, brick or plank. 2. Enough bedding should ba used to completely absorb the liquid excrements. Straw is tho best bedding. The amount, of bedding should be equal to one-fourth of the dry matter of the feed given, This would in general be about 6 to 0 £ lb for every 1000 lb. of live weight of stock per day. 3, Where the manure is alio wed to accumulate in tho stable it is ofteu necessary to employ some absorbent for the escaping ammonia. The best absorbents are muck and soil sprinkled over tho surface from time to time. Where these cannot be had tho following substances may bo employed:—Gypsum, or land plaster, -h lb, per day for every 1000 lb. live weight; sulphurij acid, 1 part to 1000 parts of water. Ono pintof this mixture per week will be suilioicnt for each animal. With this precaution no loss or evil results will como from the accumulation of manure in stables. 4. Where stables are daily cleaned a manure pit for the prt'servatimi of luamiro should lie provided. This pil should have doubhtno stable 3urface, should be two feat deep, tttnl baYQ a wall or ttnmttd

the outside, at least a font higher than the surrounding surface, in order to exclude water during rains. The bottom and sides of the pit should be impervious to water, so as to prevent loss of the soluble constituents. The manure should be spread over the whole pit. and not be pilod up at one point. Here it will keep moist, which prevents heating, and all of iho soluble iiiKi-cdients will bo' preserved. Manure from such ;i pit, according to the authority quoted, would contain per ton ! 10 11). of nitrogen, 5.2 !!,. of pliospl orio acid and 12.0 IL\ of potaMi. The money value wouhl be about 3 dol. per ton.— (Dolman's Rural World. Waste ok Butti-.u.milk.- The difiiculy ol getting the residents (J f !ln English city to take to any fool, no matter how good, to which they havo never been accustomed, is well exemplified in tho case of Aylesbury Dairy arrangements in Loudon, and tho disposal of their buttermilk. Lord Fortescue, speaking lately at Exeter upon the subject of Waste of Food, remarked that " When ho went to sen tho Aylesbury Dairy arramroments hi London he was horrified to hear that gallons and gallons of that most nutritious part of the milk—that which built up the fabrics of flesh, and especially bone, in man and all animals—was thrown down the sewers. There was a poor neighbourhood, whining and lamenting, but in which plenty of hotting was going on, yet the 'skimmers ' would not take the trouble to carry away this buttermilk, although they woro often invited to do so ' free, gratis, fornothimr.' The managers of the dairy had no room to store it, and any sourness in the atmosphere would havo spoiled their products." We doubt if such a circumstance cnuld bo recorded of tho people of any European town out of England.

Farming in New Zealand.—A Canterbury correspondent, writing' to the Bristol Times, Mays ho in convinced that no country in the world can beat New Zealand in agricultural pursuits, and adds the following particulars as to his own farm:—l have averaged about 40 bushels of wheat per acre on my farm for tho last seventeen years. Last year I threshed 50 bushels per acre of wheat and oats off a 75-acre paddock; it had been hayed, then grazed (cattle and sheep) for four years, then a single ploughing with a double-furrow plough, disc harrowed, tyne harrowed, rolled aud drilled ; wheat five pecks, oats seven pecks, an acre. No manure of anv description has ever been on that pudlouk. The previous year I threshed oil bushels per acre off 21 acres of wheat," and this year I hope to do more than that, from the present appearance of the crop, of 80 acres of wheat. The land was ploughed in June, drilled in tho middle of July, cut with reaper and binder at tho end of January, stacked in February, and threshed on April 20th. One good thing is that a man can work out of doors every working day in the year; the average for tho last eighteen years, of days when my men could not go out, six days per annum. All, however, is not coulcur tic rote. We havo a very strong, hot, dry wiud, not so bad as the " brick dtutors " in Australia, or the El Norte of Mexico, but which, when it comes in harvest time, does much damage to the crops. Much of the hid effects of this wind may, however, h-i greatly mitigited by the plmitins.' uf hedgerow timber, which will break the force of the wind and shield the crop.

Caiji' kma.v liifiiGATiON Laws.—The water of every natural stream is declared by the Constitution of Colorado the property of the public, and is dedicated to the people's use. There arc no riparian rights. The canals are taken out of the rivers and creeks, and at present furnish water only for valley lands. The fertile plan ranges and smooth mesa or table lands lie above the level of the streams, aud must eventually be supplied with water by great aud costly systems of reservoirs. When all the water of a stream is claimed and appropriated by ditches, it becomes a source of contention among its users, and the law is active in determining and enforcing the rights of tho respective canal companies. The law is based on the principal that the rights to water is acquired by priority of of utilisation ; that is to say, the courts hold that water should not be taken away from those who first have utilised it in good faith. If, for instance, a canal has used the full capacity of a stream, it is for ever eutitled to all the waters of that stream. The volume of a river from which several canals are conducted having been estimated in cubic feet per second of time by the State, engineer, each ditch company appears before the district, which has jurisdiction, subject to appeal to the Supreme Court, and shows when it was constructed, what its capacity is and how much water it has used, or can use, for actual tillage. The Court thereupon decrees to each company the number of cubic feet of water per second it is entitled to draw each season from the stream, and its rank of priority, i.e., its order of precedence with respect to other canals supplied from the same stream.