NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 2 August 1913, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

"Lucerne is the richest hay food known," is the way W. J/Spillman of the United States Department ot Agriculture, expresses it. There are 264 cow-testing associations in Germany, all established since 1907. The cows that are dealt with number 341,900, or 32 per cent, of all the milk-yielding cattle. Knowing accurately the true worth of each cow, get rid of the poorer, and breed from only the best ones, lilis knowledge can only be acquired, however, by systematic testing. ■ According to current reports, the State of Michigan, U.S.A., has erected more silos during the last year than any previous two years. This shows that the dairy farmers of Michigan have begun to thoroughly realise the importance of silage. Cow peas make good silage, and they are being grown quite considerably in the United States of America with maize, yet they may be put into the silo alone. The machinery that will cut maize and elevate it into the silo will also cut and elevate peas. Clover is an excellent pasture for pigs, and lucerne, though not used somuch, is equally good. It is estimated that clover, lucerne, rape, or rape-clover-and-oat mixture, properly grown and fed, will effect a saving of nearly 30 per cent, in the gram ration for growing pigs. Observation, as one travels over the country visiting flock after flock, leads him more and more to the conclusion that the better-grown lamb is almost invariably to be found in those flocks where, as near as possible, the sheep and her produce are Isept naturally, and where they are not run together in large lots (says a writer in the Australasian). A shipment of wool from Rhodesia was offered at public auction in England during May, and, in spite of competition, sold at good prices. The wool, which came from the Rhodes' Farm at Inyanga realised 7^d for greasy to Is 4_d for scoured. It is described as being of a very useful character, well and carefully packed and classified. The cause of warts on cattle cannot be confidently stated. Some change takes place in nutrition of the skin. Cauterise the warts carefully with lunar caustic pencil, or with nitric acid or trichloride of antimony, and repeat the application as often as found necessary. Large warts should be' twis-ted off at once and the bases cauterised. Before putting- any milk through a separator the bowl should be warned' up with some hot water. The pu-per speed i." revolutions per minute v.ill be indicated on __B_^«-ndle _f the machine; it should be turneu gradually at.first, .and by the time that the bowl and all the working parts have been warmed" up to a temperature closely approaching that of milk—Bodeg. Fahr.—the machine should be working at full speed. Then—and not before —the milk should be turned on, and the machine kept working regularly at full speed until all the milk has run out. Mr Lange, a resident of Java. i_tends experimenting with sheep on the tablelands in that country, a purpose i_ which they have not hitherto been put. The Chronicle understands that with that object in view, he has returned to New Zealand, and through the agency of Messrs Freeman R. Jackson and Co,. of Wanganui, has purchased twenty Ilomneys, twenty Lincoln., twenty Bor-der-Leicesters, twenty Corridales, and lie also contemplates getting twenty Merinos in the South. Two rams are included in the nucleus of each flock, and the experiment of the exportation of New Zealand sheep to a country that knows them not, will be watched with great initerest by sheep-breeders of this Dominion particularly as, if the sheep to be taken across thrive and do well, an entirely new market for our sheep will be opened up. In fact, Mr Lange has already ex_>ressed his intention of returning next year and buying largely of the stock best adapted for the climate, which . apparently is not much warmer than New Zealand, there being even frosts on the hills in winter. About half the land is ploughable, and Mr Lange is A-ery confident of the ultimate success of his enterprise.