SOME GENERAL TOPICS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 85, 20 January 1938, Page 8

SOME GENERAL TOPICS.

LOSSES AMONG SHEEP. £ISOO A YEAR TO BE SPENT ON INQUIRY. The New Zealand Wool Publicity Committee lias allocated £ISOO a year to enable an exhaustive survey to be made of the position with respect r.o serious losses of sheep which occur from year to year. This decision was reached at a meeting of the committee held in Wellington last Friday. Special consideration was given to the question of allocating funds for work in the interests of sheep-breeders,, and the-grant of £ISOO was made in view of the serious losses of sheep which tend to increase rather than to decrease. In addition a sub-committee was appointed to confer with the re-cently-established Bureau .of Animal Industry for the purpose of making full arrangements for the necessary research work to be undertaken at the earliest possible moment. The committee considered several other lines of investigation which should yield valuable results to sheep-growers, and a special sub-committee was appointed to go into the question of cooperation with New Zealand Moollen Mill Owners’ .Association.

Treatment of Sore Teats. Sore teats cause much loss to the dairy farmer, and the condition should always be suitably treated on its first appearance. Chapped teats are caused by the sudden chilling of the teats after wet milking, after the call lias ceased sucking, or by contact with

stagnant water, filth or irritants when lying down. The chapping may he slight, or on the other hand, it may extend into gaping sores, inducing retention of milk or even causing maiumitis.

Sore teats may be prevented by washing the udder and teats thoroughly with warm water and soap when the cow first comes in, carefully drying the udder before applying olive oil to the teats. If the cow already has sore teats, they should be washed with warm soapy waiter; then thoroughly dried and treated with carbolised vaseline. If the sores are extensive and the irritation great, the teats should first be washed with a solution of 1 drachm of sugar of lead to 1 pint of rainwater, after which benzoated zinc oxide ointment should be applied.

The careful use of a 'sterile teat sh plion is desirable when the sores are very deep and painful, as manual milking opens the sores continually. Wet milking is a dirty and undesirable practice from every point of view.

Suction of Plough Shares. It costs more to plough with worn shares, a. great deal more, than it does to sharpen them—it takes more power, it takes more time and results in excessive wear on the plough, particularly the wheel bearings if hitching high on the plough is resorted to to make the plough take to the ground, as it often is.

There is more to reconditioning. a plough-share than merely restoring the edge. If you hold a yardstick under the bottom edge of the landslide of a new plough, with the edge of the yardstick touching the point of the share and the heel of the landslide, you will note that at the point where the share joints the landslide there is approximately half an inch clearance or downsuck. It is the characteristic which makes the plough take to the ground. You can check the bottom suck in a bottom having a • short landslide by placing the bottom on a level surface and placing a half-inch block under the heel of the landslide.

Too frequently, when the shares begin to lose their suck and the plough begins to run out on the slightest provocation, the ploughman tries to overcome the difficulty by raising the hitch on the plough. Now, if you lay: a rail over a block and push down on one end the other end is bound to come up. That is just what happens when you hitch too high on the plough. The frame of the plough is the rail,-and the plough wheels are the block. The result of hitching too high is that while you do “throw the plough on its noso” you raise the heels of the landslides, you lose the steadying effect of the landslides, the plough lias a tendency to kick to the left, and there is excessive wear on the front furrow and landwheel bearings.

The Land Remains. One must not forget that essential truth, the land remains. This being so, some day the farming community of this district will work through to a more stable form of agriculture than continuous grain-growing, to an agriculture based upon livestock (writes A. G. Street in the “Farmers’ Weekly”). This must be, for wherever one finds a prosperous farmer it is the man who is mainly a livestock farmer ; and even those who, are still mainly grain-grow-ers, admit'that it has been their livestock which has kept them going through the past nine years of depression .

Be that as it may, and admitting that Manitoban farmers are not altogether blameless for some of their troubles, it cannot be denied that they have been punished very harshly for their shortcomings, and that of agricultural depression as they have experienced it, we home farmers know nothing whatsoever. To-dav they are living very simply indeed, and would be content with so very little, that I felt ashamed of my own good fortune. The Government has subsidised their hired help. It has permitted many of them to wipe out their hopeless insolvency by the respect-de-stroying process of going before the Debt Adjustment Board. They pray for rain and better crops. They are fast losing all hope of ever again being able to visit the Old Country which bred them. They are hanging on, a generation, of disappointed middle-age. This alteration in the spirit of the west has taken place since the war. Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. Here similar comparison with regard to her defeats might be made quite fairly.

Corriedales Thrive in Scotland. The Scottish Shorthorn breeder, Mr James Piper, has proved that the Corriedale will thrive in Scotland, where he has established a registered flock. He is already exporting rams to South Africa.