PAMPAS GRASS

Hokitika Guardian, 26 June 1935, Page 6

PAMPAS GRASS

CLiAJM AS FODDER SOME IX VEST JGATI ON S AYEI.LILNGTON, June 24. A giant grass scorned fur many years by farmers may revolutionise tlie dairying and sheeping farming industries in New Zealand. That is an opinion based upon scientific and practical farming research of a number of people in New Zealand to-day. 'file giant grass is known as pampas—gunerium (certaderia) agentium. It is a native of South America, but has been ' naturalised in New Zealand. It is similar in appearance to the New Zealand native toi-toi, hut pampas is succulent and it sought gy cattle as food in preference in certain circumstances to pasture crass. Cattle allowed to feed upon pampas grass, it is stated, produce milk with butter-fat increased by .J per cent, or more in comparison with their normal yield. Upon their return to grass pasture the butter-fat content falls. Pampas grass returns 50 tons of succulent fodder to the acre, and may lie cutback and burned out, with a rapid return of succulent shoots. It is more nourishing than turnips, and may be grown upon swampy ground. It does not suffer from frosts. “WONDERFUL POSSIBILITIES” “I believe it is one of t;he biggest single discoveries that has been made in New Zealand,” declared Mr TV C. ! .Aston, chief agricultural chemist of the Department of Agriculture in an interview to-day. “It opens up wonderful possibilities. If you give farmers a tip they usually ask right away what it costs to put into execution. Here is a tip and here is something for almost nothing. The cost of establishing 1000 pampas plants and to produce 50 tons of succulent fodder— i s 30s. Seedings that grow a foot a month may be bought for 30s for 1000. “Pampas may be substituted for turnips and other such crops, and is more nourishing than turnips. Turnip contain 00 per cent of water; pampas contains only 75 per cent. Cows turned from good pasture on to pampas areas at once return higher, butter-fat production than formerly. That has been established, and over a period that higher production has ; been maintained. When cows are taken off the area the butter-fat ratio immediately falls. When pampas areas have grown to a good height and have been eaten off until only dry stalks and leaves are left tire is put through tlie dry stuff and the area is reduced to a mass of ashes. In several days fresh green shoots appear and the whole procedure is in motion again.

FARMERS MORE INTERESTED “Farmers are getting more interested than they were. It is most difficult to get farmers interested in tilings that are for their benefit and the nation’s benefit, too. For -a long while they were merely interested; then when 1 published a paper in the Journal of Agriculture showing wlmt has been done over several years by Mr A. Me Clean, of Waitakaruru, Hauraki Plains —facts which I have proved in my own garden and through, independent investigation—a clamour has set in for copies' tof the journal. 'The journal has been sold out and many copies of the article will have to be run off to meet fie demand. “The problems of sheep farmers ‘concerning a supply of fodder for sheep when they ere driven from high country by snow during the winter may ho solved. Pampas that grows a foot a month in the warm areas of the Hauraki Plains, though it may grow less in the colder districts of the vSoputh Island will definitely he a most valuable fodder for sheep there, in the opinion of investigators.”

EARLY INVESTIGATION S The possibility of using the grass was raised in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute in 1876 by Dr S. Al. Curl, of Manawatu, who said in a paper printed in October of that year: “'This pampas is a- noble grass with seed stems i 0 feet high if allowed to seed, hut if it is within reach of stock, they will keep it low, Being particularly fond of its coarse leaves. It contains a large amount of nutriment and grows through both winter and summer, no cold affecting it, and as the young leaves appear all cattle and sheep will quickly eat them, leaving more delicate herbage to feed on this.” Sir George Grey also experimented with pampas in the ‘seventies on his island farm at Ka-wan. Since those days, however, farmers have been content to use pampas as shelter and townsmen to give it space in their gardens for ornamental purposes. “It takes your breath away when you think what could be done with pampas in New Zealand at a time like the present, knowing what the cost and bother of providing winter fodder is as well as The need to keep production cost down to. a minimum,” said Mr Aston, “he are going into the chemical composition of pampas as compared with other grasses. There is a difference and we shall find just what it is.”