LUCERNE FOR STOCK FEEDING.

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 138, 7 December 1918, Page 11

LUCERNE FOR STOCK FEEDING.

According to an official report from South Africa, more fortunes have been made from^the cultivation of lucerne than from any other product of South Africa, gold and diamonds exempted. It is there declared that a good crop of lucerne will produce six and a-half tons of dry fodder per acre. Two acres will maintain two cows during the summer. It.is further claimed that lucerne is the largest forage crop the world haa ever known. Certainly lucerne has proved its value in many other countries. In the United States its use is extending over vast areas, although the man who did more than any other to encourage its use, the late Mr. Joe Wing, grew it not as a forago for stock, but to bring back to a state of fertility an abandoned farm, and this he succeeded' in doing, for by means of lucerne he made an exhausted soil produce the bumper maize crop of his State. Argentine, of course, is a striking example of the possibilities of lucerne, but there the loose open soil is assuredly favourable to it. In France lucerne covers over a million acres, and ia said to be indispensable to the small cultivator.

It is reported from South Australia that the Hlawarra (milking Shorthorn) heifer, Violet 11. of Hillview, holds the record for milk yield for the Commonwealth for any two or three-year-old cow, with 10,1091b milk, which yielded 368f1b butter. F<om Tasmania it is claimed that the Frieeland heifer, Royal Duchess de Kol, imported from New Zealand by Mr. A. J. Copping, of Kellevie, produced, under official tegt, last season, a» a two-year-old, 10,9191b milk, and 4041b butterfat, and, therefore, holds the records for cows of this age.

Mr. S. P. Edge (a noted Home farmer) is convinced that pigs improve the fertility of the soil more than any other farm animal. His plan is to take derelict land which would not feed cows, and put his breeding sows on it to eat up the weeds and grass; then plough itj dress it with basic slag and lime only, and grow clover. He has found that the sows only require' a pound of concentrated food in addition to tha clover and grass that they can pick up.

Representations have been made to the Romney Association of England on behalf of convalescent Australians and New Zealanders who wish co visit the flocks of the members before returning home. Arrangements are being made (says the Live Stock Journal) for visits to the flocks in parties of suitable numbers.

An average of £32 5s apiece for 84 Lincoln longwool rams was recently obtained by a Home breeder.