FARMING IN THE KING COUNTRY

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1925, Page 18

FARMING IN THE KING COUNTRY

SHEEP AND WOOL.

(By ANCHORITE.)

From now on to shearing may be said to be the time during which Hhe fleece is grown. Sheep-owners should remember that good pastures produce fat sheep and add weight.to the wool. On the other hand, light pastures make light fleeces. Wet seasons like the present may yield an abundance of grasses of poor feeding quality. The sheep find- but little nourishment, the clip may be weak and poorly grown. Constant wetting and drying may make wool tender and unsound. Dry seasons may also mean short feed, the sheep become impoverished and their wool light. A succession of cold winds will make the wool harsh, whilst a succession of drenching rains during the next two months will lessen the weight of the fleece.

The Skin and the Fleece. The condition of the fleece is largely dependent on that of the skin, for just as the soil of a paddock furnishes the nourishment of a crop of grain, so the skin of a shee]) yields a fleece of wool—the wool fibres are really an outgrowth of the skin itself. Within the thickness of the skin, pear-shaped receptacles form, and out of these the fibres grow, pushing their way up through the outer skin, and so develop into the growing fleece. Connected with these receptacles by tubes, are glands, which secrete an oily substance known as yolk, which not only feeds the fibres of the growing fleece, but protects them, and keeps them lubricated; this prevents them from matting or felting. One may observe during any wool season, the strongest evidence showing whether a flock has or has not been carefully managed. Side by side, and from the same district, one can see wools that exhibit high quality, character, and the elasticity, that go to make up the good fleece, with" others which lack all or some of these desirable features. As one can grow poor, thin, and parched crops, so one can grow thin and inferior wool. Lamb's Wool.

•Sheepfarmers in this part of the Dominion are divided in their opinions as to the value of shearing the lambs before they are weaned. If the country the lambs are depastured upon is rough and broken, or extremely high, exposed to the prevailing winds and with little natural shelter, -it might be then advisable to forego the shearing of the lambs. In such a case, however, they should .be well crutched. Under conditions where natural or artificial shelter is abundant, it is better to shear_the lambs- before they are weaned, both. as regards their health and" for revenue producing purposes. The usual time in tho King Country to shear lambs ia during the month of February, but if the land is badly infested with bidi-bidi, shearing must be undertaken before the seed matures. At that'stage it sticks to the wool, anil seriously lessens its, value. .The time of ripening of the brdi-bidi varies with tlie seasons, but it usually begins to adhere to wool at the latter end of .January. .. The ■ wise flockmaster will shears his lambs before the bidi-bidi menace reaches the stage of adhering to the wool.

Parasites in; Lamb's wool. ■'. Ticks cause havoc with lamb's wool. These pests migrate from the at shearing time (ordinary flock shearing is in November) and'go on to the lambs. The ticks thus cause a depreciation in the value of the wool unless the unshorn lambs are dipped at the time, the ewes are shorn.' The importance of dipping the lambs when their mothers are being shorn is increasingly recognised. The dipping should be done before the ticks which have left the ewes have had time to 'deposit eggs in the fleece of the lambs. The soundness of this practice is apparent when one observes how much more acute the tick trouble always is amongst undipped hoggets (older lambs) as compared with grown sheep. When ticks and lice are allowed to become numerous by neglect to dip the lambs with an effective preparation, they reduce the condition of the animal, and seriously check the growth of the fleece. General. Large sums of money are annually lost by careless sheep-owners through the skin vermin.- These losses may easily be overcome by careful dipping. The presence of lice is even more serious than that of the tick. They are the cause of serious losses to the wool growers of the Dominion.

Dipping not only destroys the insect pests, but it has a distinctly beneficial effect upon the value of the wool. It is to the interests of all wool-growers to study the means of securfner the best prices for the clip, and it will be found that dipping will be of some considerable advantage to that end. Existing indications point to the fact that the present will probably I>e the most successful wool growing season experienced in the King Country