FARMS AND FARMERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 May 1938, Page 10

FARMS AND FARMERS

ITEMS OF INTEREST

(By

"Rousrabou")

TOMICS FOR POULTRY DRINKING WATER USED The giving of tonics and drugs nt the drinking water is a sound way of administering medicines to poultry, because the bir.ds-'-are .bound io take them in a form in which they can make speedy use of them, which is not the case with some pills and capsules. There are certain precautions to take, however. The water must be thoroughly clean and contain no other drug which might combine with the second one and cause severe upset ot Ihe birds’ digestive organs. It is .preferable, too, to use carl henware vessels, for many tonics act chemically upon metal. In no case should tonics' be given in si longer quantities than those recommended because the drinking water is 1 hereby made distasteful and the birds drink only the minimum amount to quench their thirst, with tlm result that egg. product ion falls at .once. The cheapest disinfectant-tonic, is permanganate of potash. A stock solution is made by dissolving loz ot. crystals in a quart of water and shaking up well to dissolve. One tablespoonful of 'this is added to each gallon of drinking water, which is made a reddish-pink colour. When the solution' has turned brown, the disinfectant power lias been used up.

Chicks which have survived an outbreak of disease should' be given loz of 21 per cent, tincture of iodine to each gallon of drinking water as a replacement tonic. As an appetiser, 45 grains’ of citrate of iron and quinine' should be well dissolved in each gallon. As an internal antiseptic for Winter chicks, one-third teaspoonfill of; powdered catechu should be dissolved

I in each gallon of drinking water. 1 As a conditioner for adult hens ffor use only on clear bright days) give one dessertspoonful to each pint, of water of the following stock solution: —Four ounces of sodium mil- j phale (Glaubers’ salts) dissolved in one pint of warm water. As an aperient, follow the same quantities as for Glaubers’ salts, but use magnesium, sulphate—F.e., Epsom salts. For colds, add four tablespoonfuls to each gallon of drinking water of the following:—One and a-half ounces iron sulphate and Soz copper sulphate,' dissolved in one quart of water. To aid feather growth in. later moulters,, give one teaspoonful of tincture At iodine to each gallon of water.

•For cockerels which seem to outgrow their strength, give half a teaspoonful of nux vomica to each quart of water. The best laying tonic is- Douglas mixture, which- varies in its make-up, but the formula here given is’ excellent: Place four ounces of the best sulphate of iron and half an ounce of sulphuric acid in a glazed’ earthenware jar and pour over-one gallon’ of water to dissolve. Of this give, every third or fourth day, one tablespoonful to each quart of drinking water. Two simple, easily administered I tonics for occasional use are one peasize crystal of iron sulphate or half a teaspoonful of steel drops in each pint of drinking*-water. —“Smallholder,” (England). 1

DEBT TO SHEEP SCIENCE FINDS MANY USES If the horse is the friend of man. the sheep is'our provider, says Maxwell Munden, in the “Sunday Chronicle.' Relieve it or not, we are indebted to 1 he sheep for: — The rustlessness of our razorblades: The growth of the British. Empire; The elliciency of our tennis, squash, or badminton rackets; Keeping our rates and tuxes down; The quick-healing of our operations: Rouge, lipstick, face-creams, and other cosmetics. Let's look al the sheep in the various stages of its life. Alive, it saves parks, golf courses, and public commons thousands ot pounds a year in- grass-mowing costs. Sheep give the world I.iSu.OOO lons of wool a year, imagine this amount of wool heaped in .piles the sizes of Ihe average haystack, which weighs 20 tons. It would make 87,500 of those. Wool runs like a skein through the history of the British Empire. The influence of the sheep crops up repeatedly. Woollen manufacture was already a commerce in Britain when Julius Caesar arrived. And it soon became such a. rich source of English wealth that at least Ihrcc. monarchs have passed special laws lo protect it. Charles 11. oven went so far as to levy a tax on alt corpses not buried in woollens. Some 200 years before him. Edward 111. showed the Lord Chancellor where be expected the money to come from for bis expeditions in Franco, by making the Chancellor's ollicial seat in the 1 louse of Lords, a large sack of wool. The Woolsack is st ill I he Lord Chan-1 cellor's ollicial seal in the House.

13 It EE DI NG EXP EIIIM EN TS But it was not until 1741 that Robert Bakewell, hardy Leicestershire yoeman, put. sheep-breeding in Eng|,land on a scientific basis. He made ■stock-breeding an expert study for the first time; provided better meat for England’s then fast-growing millions, better wool for England’s busy mills. Then things began to happen in England’s new' colony, Australia. Her growth and prosperity can' be traced directly to one man’s pioneering spirit— and sheep. In 1794 John MacArthur, who had accompanied the first consignment of emigrants, was given a. commission and 200 acres of land as an inducement to settle here. He began to experiment at breeding I

from a handful of sheep on the slope: around Sydney Harbour. Necessitj forced him to explore and discovei much of Australia’s 1 richest grazing lands. • To-day, Australia's 114,000,0 DD sheep give her one-quarter of the world’s wool production, and are her chief source of income. But the most interesting thing about the' sheep is the grease that has to be washed from its wool before the fleece can be used. For centuries 1 “wool-dirt” was a waste product. It filled the Bradford sewers, and in wool-combing countries where water was scarce, the need- to wash wool was a curse. Then in 1890 an- English chemist exlerimented with wool grease and read

a paper on his findings lo the Society of the Chemical Industry. First it. was found that wool grease in its relined state —lanolin —is the nearest to human fat ever known. It will take a tincture into the bloodstream within a few minutes of being put on the skin. • In a few years the enormous cosmetic industry sprang up. with its millions of pounds- turnover ami an insatiable demand for skin benefiting c hcmicals. Just after the last, war, British industry became alarmed at the increasing amount of dermatitis and similar skin troubles suffered by workers each year. The Home Oflico was asked lo investigate. After considerable research a committee found’ that lanolin would -put back into the human skin the natural fats taken out by the mineral oils, spirits, and acids used in- industrial processes. To-day, thousands of employees in factories and works are provided with drums of this refined sheep's grease for use before and after work.

RUST PREVENTION But Ihe help the bumble sheep's grea.se has given' pharmaceutics is nothing compared with the way it has come lo the rescue of the metal industries. The greatest curse of the metal age. has been . . . rust. Thousands of pounds’ worth of stocks can bo ruined in a night if damp hits a warehouse of uncoiitcd’ metal goods. Rust can destroy whole shiploads of machinery, tools, mils and bolts, razor blades, or engine, parts going to tropical climates. Scientists have found that wool grease, relined to the stage of lanolin, has unique- metal-protective qualities. Thousands of gallons of lanolin rust preventives arc used to protect metal goods during export and between mannfac.ttiring processes. Uses for sheep’s grease in its various’ stages of reliiicrnciit are si ill being found. In its cruder state it is used as a lubricant, and in the manufacture of soap and candles. Its waterproofing qualities (ever noticed how rain runs off a sheep’s wool?) have led paint manufacturers’ to investigate its uses’ in their trade. I So much for the sheep alive. Dead, it becomes one ot the world’s most important foods. I

New Zealand is the biggest exporter of mutton and lamb, and we in flic United Kingdom take 95 per cent, of i.hc world’s total exports, and’ arc the third largest producers. I The British Empire, in fact, is the mutton and lamb business, for it furnishes about SI per cent, of the world's supplies. Then there are the inedible parts of the sheep: the sausage trade, for instance depends- on the sheep’s intestines for its skins. “Catgut” is made from sheep’s intestines, too. and a large industry founded on just this one small part of the sheep. It is used fur surgical purposes and racket and musical strings. At the’ London Hospital’s ligature department in Whitechapel, 2,500 lambs-’ intestines are converted every week into stitches for sewing operation wounds.' Sheep’s hooves are usually sent to tbo chemical department at Woolwich Arsenal and boiled down to help make nitroglycerine and other explosives.

CARE OF EWES BALANCED DIET “If flock-owners' put their hands in their pockets a month before lambing started, they would spend less than would lie necessary if they withheld the extra food until after lambing,” said- Mr. J. T. H. Thomas (vice-Prin-cipal, Royal Agricultural College), an

’authority 011 sheep husbandry, in a lecture in Lancashire. For blackface ewes, a Winter diet of grass and hay was satisfactory, but heavier breeds, like halfbreds and Downs, needed something extra. It was his practice to start giving three parts crushed oats’ and one part, cot-ton-seed meal or eartlmut meal a' month or six week's betore lambing. They must distinguish between Illness and fat tress. He gave regularly two or three mangolds apiece to ewes before lambing, and found that this promoted the necessary laxative condition. On grass, mangolds, with good hay, would make a satisfactory diet before, lambing. A form of poisoning (“twindisease”) was common with sheep carrying twin lambs. The. sheep went down a week or so before lambing. In his opinion a shortage of protein in the diet of the ewes was the cause of this’ trouble. To supply the necessary protein in a digestible form and also a certain amount of minerals, he suggested u mixture of live parts crushed oats and one- part of white-fish meal. Pulpy kidney disease (“lamb sickness" or “strike”) caused the sudden death of many good single lambs through acute poisoning of the blood stream. This form of loss was common in Hocks where early lamb was produced, and Mr. Thomas suggested that single lambs should be separated from doubles and have less concentrated food.