MIXED GRAZING

Hawera Star, Volume L, 7 March 1931, Page 13

MIXED GRAZING

Experiments at Cockle Park, England, in which the effects of manures on pasture are measured by. the liveweight increase of the grazing stock, have shown that there is a much better' utilisation of herbage by cattle and sheep together than by grazing sheep alone, Live-weight increases over a period of years have been approximately twice as great under the first system as under the second. P Crazing experiments so far reported from Cockie Park have been concerned principally with sheep alone, so that the results of a mixed gi azmg trial carried out by the .Leicestershire Agricultural Education Committee as part of the research scheme of the Loyal Agricultural Society, should be of special interest. The soil on which the trial was conducted comprised boulder alay at an elevation of 400 feet, and when tauen over was in a poor and badly-grazed condition. In 1923 five 10-acre plots were put down, and after a year devoted to a uniformity trial, various phosphate manures were applied, and six-year mixed grazing programme instituted. , . , It was found that basic slag (30 pel cent phosphate) applied at the rate of 13cwt. to the acre gave the most successful result, there apparently being a slight advantage in giving the amount in two dressings of GJowt., three years apart, instead of applying the whole in the initial dressing. Finely-ground North African phosphate friven in one dressing at the rate of 63cwt to the acre, was found to be less effecitve than basic slag, while the feeding of cotton cake to stock on plots which received half the standard dressing of slag gave no cash gain above that produced by the full dressing of slag alone. A noteworthy feature was that systematic grazing and surface cultivation worked a considerable improvement in the herbage apart from manuring.