Barley Supplies For Winter Feed

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30426, 28 April 1964, Page 11

Barley Supplies For Winter Feed

To make up for the lack of pasture growtli and supple l mentary feed crops on Canterbury farms considerable supplies of barley are being made available for feeding to stock and there are also plentiful supplies of bran and pollard.

As a result of a bumper barley crop this' year, Mr J. H. Hewlett, general manager of the Canterbury Malting Company, said at the weekend several hundred thousand bushels of barley in excess of malting requirements would be available through merchants for feed. He said the barley would be available to farmers at 10s a bushel, ex store, sacks extra. Later there might have to be an adjustment in the price to take account of storage charges and interest, etc. The general manager of the. Wheat Committee, Mr L. C. Duhshea, also said on Friday that plentiful supplies of bran and pollard were available. The main sales had been to jthe poultry' industry and to town milk suppliers, but bran and pollard had been fed to sheep and cattle and there was a possibility that they could be used to help meet the difficult situation now facing farmers. He said bran was available to merchants- in Christchurch at £l6 a ton, sacks extra, and pollard at £l7 a ton, sacks extra, for a 20001 b ton. A representative of a Christchurch stock and station firm said at the weekend that bran was available to farmers at £l7 a ton and pollard at £lB. Welcome Addition Questioned about the use of barley and pollard for sheep feed, Professor I. E. Coop, of Lincoln College, said they would be a welcome addition to available feeds if a way could be found of feeding them out. There was a certain amount of inconvenience in feeding them and there was a question of whether the sheep would eat them as they did not like fine ground material much. A possibility might be to pellet them, provided this could be done at reasonable cost. Currently there is a heavy demand for sheep nuts.