HOME-MADE NUTS USED

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31143, 20 August 1966, Page 8

HOME-MADE NUTS USED

A South Canterbury farmer winters his sheep entirely on sheep nuts and hay. He makes his own sheep nuts. The farmer is Mr I. R. Ross, of Pleasant Point. His 1600strong ewe flock is run 30 miles away at Sherwood at 1500 to 1600 ft above sea level. It is in a snow area and last winter was under snow for five weeks, but under nutfeeding the ewes still did well and there was no break in the wool. This winter there has been up to 4in of snow. Mr Ross, who formerly farmed with a brother, has been feeding nuts to sheep foi some 10 years, but only in the last three years have home-made nuts been used. With the use of2 nuts, no winter feed is grown and this enables more stock to be carried. Now that he is alone, Mr Ross has reduced the ewe flock to 1600 but he soon

hopes to return to 2500—possibly next year. Most of the contents of the nuts are home grown. They include oats, barley and lucerne meal. Also in the nuts are malt combings a byproduct of the malt industry. Mr Ross says that as well as being high in protein these tend to be fibrous and therefore perform a useful function in binding the nuts together. Some molasses in powder form is also added to the mixture. A typical mixture would include about 1001 b of malt combings, 1501 b of barley, 2401 b of oats, 1001 b of lucerne meal and possibly about 101 b of molasses. Last year the cost of the nuts in the bag in the barn where they were made was estimated to be about £2l a ton. This year Mr Ross says that, oats being cheaper, the cost could be less than this. At harvesting the lucerne, loose chopped, is spread on the barn floor for drying, warm air being blown up

through it. It may then be ground into a meal for storage awaiting use in nut making. The various components of the nut mixture are loaded off the back of a motor-truck and carried by auger to a hammer mill for grinding, The ground material is blown up into a hopper and then feeds down into a pelleting press assembled by? a Christchurch firm. Mr Ross says that an hour spent on loading the components off the truck will keep the pelleting process going all day. Depending on the fineness of the grinding, about 4 to scwt of nuts are turned out an hour. To supply the ewe flock for a week requires the pelleting press to be run for not more than Iff hours. It largely runs on its own when the necessary materials have loaded out from the back of the truck. The feeding of the nuts begins about the shortest day and goes on to about September 15 to 20. At first about four ounces of nuts are fed per sheep together with a bale of hay to 50 sheep. Towards lambing the nut ration is built up to about 8 ounces a sheep. Mr Ross says that to give all sheep a fair chance to get their ration it is desirable to have the ewes in mobs of only about 200, for there are always the shy feeders to be considered. The nuts are dribbled out in a line across the paddock as they are fed out. They may be distributed from a trailer behind a tractor or the bag may be carried manually and the nuts dropped out. Until recently Mr Ross also had a cattle fattening project in progress. This involved fattening over a three month period also using nuts. In this case the cattle were getting a combination of malt combings and barley and some molasses. The high cost of buying in cattle has brought this to a standstill.