NO SHEEP CROP LIKE GRASS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 22, 7 November 1935, Page 8

NO SHEEP CROP LIKE GRASS

THE IDEAL FOOD

YOUNG VEGETATION ESSENTIAL. PASTURE MUST BE KEPT SHORT. I believe there is only one thing on which lambs will grow and ewes will milk to capacity, and that is young, actively growing green vegetation. When a plant has shot its flower or gone to seed the good in it, for sheep, is gone. ’The secret of sheep pasture is to keep it short and this will never be done by the sheep themselves, no matter how closely they are stocked. They are the epicures of the farm extracting tho raisins from the pudding but leaving the suet untouched, writes Allan Fraser in an exchange. Watch the way they eat, moving quickly from place to place, head and mobile lips close to the ground. Compare that picture with the cow thrusting out her unselective tongue in a semi-circular sweep, taking in stem, leaf, flower, and weed in majestic motion.

Because of their way of grazing, cattle have been termed useful agricultural implements but in recent years many farmers would have found it cheaper to buy tractors than to make beef. The alternative to feeding cattle on sheep pasture is to mow, and I believe the mower to he as essential a part of sheep equipment as the shears or shepherd’s crook. The best young breeding ewes I know are summered on golf-links by the sea. Some might attribute their health and bloom to the sea breezes, but, personally, I give much credit to the motor-mower.

What Really Happens. What does the mower do? At first it might seem that it wasted sheep’s meat, sending a green shower of potential mutton to lie rotting on the ground. In fact the mower does nothing of the kind. Set at reasonable height, it scarcely touches the grass the sheep are eating, but by cutting off stems, flowers and inedible weeds it gives sheep’s grass a chance to grow again. It becomes a fight between the attempt of grasses and weeds to flower and seed and the blades of the mower to keep them down. If Jambs are to top the autumn sales then the blades must win. Yet so long as cut grass lies wasted graziers will be slow to mow. A cheap outfit to dry that grass so that it may be stored will make two sheep live where one has died before. The advent of such a machine to be used on every farm, is a question of time. In every experiment so far conducted, died grass—that is to say grass cut and dried at its period of most active growth—has been proved equal to the best oil-cakes. The expense of such a machine will come down like a load of bricks once demand is established and mass production gets to work. Then, mowers will whirr on every sheep pasture from early May onwards, grass will keep green until September unless drought prevails and- bags of summer sunshine will bo kept ready to open m December’s dusk.