FEED FOR THE SPRING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 62, 14 March 1944, Page 4

FEED FOR THE SPRING

SUGGESTED SAFEGUARDS

IMMEDIATE ACTION URGED

(Special.) PALMERSTON N., this day

Plans must be carried out immediately if a threatened shortage of feed next spring is to be avoided. Postponement until the colder weather, when no feed will grow, is useless (states a bulletin issued by the Massey Agricultural College). It is imperative that the feed level be maintained in the winter, when stock is dry, and equally necessary in spring when cows and ewes are in milk. Next season's production will be adversely affected by failure to counteract the effects of this dry summer and autumn, during which stocks of hay and silage are going down and will not be available for the spring. All farmers will be affected by a shortage, but the public will be concerned more so in the case of farms supplying town milk.

At least three alternative measures can be taken now: (1) Choose a small area of the farm with a good sward of grass and clover. Shut this up, according to the district, any time from mid-April onwards. It can be fed off, in breaks if necessary, in the winter and spring to dairy cows in milk. This very good grass can be supplemented with hay and roots; (2) if an area can be spared as above, another paddock should be ploughed now for Italian ryegrass and red clover, using a mixture of two bushels of ryegrass and from 41b to 61b of clover, and (3) independently, or combined with the second alternative, ploughing can be done for green barley or green oats, using the field which would be ploughed for next year's root crop. This green feed can be used during the winter months. By September, the paddock should be turned over and worked up for the next crop.