FARM AND GARDEN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 314, 23 November 1910, Page 6

FARM AND GARDEN.

INFLUENZA IN HORSES. Mr E. Elliott, New Plymouth, sends the following interesting letter to a contemporary:—"As influenza is raging so strongly amongst horses all over the North Island, perhaps the following cure may be of interest to some of your readers: —Get some blue gum leaves, fill a kerosene tin, add water, and then boil for, say, two hours. Now get an ordinary sugar bag, and make a nosebag out of it by turning half of it down; put in about a quart of bran, pcur the hot liquid on the bran, and then put the nosebag on the horse Keep it hot by adding liquid every hour. I will guarantee this cure to win nine times out of ten. I have proved it, and during the last few weeks have treated over a dozen horses, and they have all got well, including a valuable stallion. Of course, the horse must be kept warm. A split sack under the ordinary rug is a good and cheap thing."' THE MAN ON THE LAND. For the encouragement of the young man who thinks the farm is not good enough for him: "The man who tills the soil, who wends with the hoe, and follows the plough, brings out of the earth the food for the world —in peace and war. He feeds the cities and the country; he supplies the king and peasant, the nabob and the slave, and the rich and the poor. He sows the seed he cultivates, he waits with patience on the fickle weather, takes his chances with droughts and deluges, with burning winds and with drowning rains, and it is with the sweat of his brow he brings and gives to the world the largesse of the fields. His calling is considered dignified by the world at large, and those who are fed ou-; of his bounty have adjudged him worthy."

JERSEYS AND GUERNSEYS. This is the experience of a dairy farmer in America: —The Jerseya are a breed that require good feed and care, not perhaps being so hardy as some ; of the other breeds, but with favourable conditions there should be a gunerous response in the best of dairy products. This breed should occupy a most useful place in our Vermont agriculture where creameries abound or farm dairying is followed. A closely allied breed in its origin and genera! dairy purposes, the Guernseys, is being introduced to a limited extent into the country and State. The animals composing this breed are somewhat larger than the Jerseys. WORLD'S PIG SUPPLY. American statistics show that this season 17,135,000 pigs were received by the packing houses against 22,803,000 pigs for the same period in the previous year, showing a decrease of 5,668,000 pigs, or nearly 25 per cent. Therefore, writes an authority on the pork trade, it is no wonder that prices of bacon, hams and barrelled pork have advanced in price. As regards the latter article the supply of pigs in Canada has fallen off to such an extent that we are largely dependent upon the United States for our barrelled pork. Considering the export demand for pig products in the United States from Great Britain and Canada, along with the big home consumption demand, it would be simply miraculous if prices were not high in the Republic. The advances in the price of food stuffs and other commodities, however, are not by any means confined to the United States and Canada, but are world wide. The supply of pigs has evidently'not kept pace with the increase of population, and consequently the demand could not be filled at former rates, with the inevitable result that the advance in prices was caused by the law of supply and demand, aided, of course, by the largely increased gold production.

COLOSTRUM CELLS. Dr Paul Schulz, of Berlin Royal Veterinarian School, has, according to the "Milkerei Zeitung," been examining a large number of cows' colostrum, microscopically, with the following results: — 1. The colostrum cells disappear from cow's milk in from three to eleven days after the calving, but in many cases they may be found singly, also later. 2. The time that the colostrum cells remain in the milk" is independent of breed, the milk yield, the age of the cows, the composition of the feed and the length of the dry period, only that in milk from the first parturition they disappear relatively later than from cows having had several calves.

3. Insufficient milking of the cows as well as disturbances in the function of the milk glands cause a prologed existence of colostrum cells in the milk.

4. In the milk of many cows single colostrum cells may be found during the whole period of lactation. At the end of the lactation period, when the cows go dry, there are again found single granular cells. The latter appear also, by ail kinds of udder inflammation, by stoppage of the milk in the glands as well as feverish diseases, which are combined with sudden and considerable reduction in the milk secretion.

5. The milk globules in the colostrum are comparatively few in the first days after the first calving, and are irregular in size and cohere in greater or smaller bunches. At the latest, up to the ninth day after calving this peculiarity has disppeared.

6. The colostrum is not richer in albumen membrane than common milk.