Fodder Plant.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 222, 20 March 1895, Page 2

Fodder Plant.

In these days of low prices, and consequently unprofitable husbandry, it behoves our agriculturists to adopt any means whereby profits may be j increased Farmers in America and Australia have been compelled to stop out oi the old ruts by the aecessiI ties of the case and cry to secure | profits for labor and capital, by new cultural methods. The time has come when the New Zealand farmer must do likewise, if farming is to pay. A few years back one acre paid as well as two wili do now where the old systems are followed, but it is just here that a step in advance is necessary, and farmers must increase the productiveness ot their holdings or give up. Ihe introduction of a new fodder plant which produces an extraordinary quantity of the most nutritious cattle food is a remedy, and about the only one, of the hour. This has been done elsewhere, and our New Zealand graziers would do well to follow suit. We are led to these remarks through the fact that a commencement, aud a successful one, has been made in our midst to cultivate such a plant. Mr T. Watson ot this town has on view at his office a new fodder plant now extensively grown in America (where it originated) and Australia. It is a species of sugar cane, and ail kinds of stocK eat it with avidity, and being rich in saccharine its fattening qualities are therefore of a high order. Fed to dairy cows it increases the milk enormously, and pigs fatten splendidly upon it. The plant grows to a height of from 8 to 10 feet, producing c\ v o crops a year, and a single crop will yield from 40 to 60 tons per acre. These figures have been reached in a trial growth on local soil. Every farmer should inspect this most useful plant and secure some of the seed, which is to be obtained through Mr Watson.