VALUE OF CHAIN HARROWING

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3308, 30 March 1926, Page 5

VALUE OF CHAIN HARROWING

FULL BENEFITS NOT APPRECIATED The chain harrowing of t. pasture should be too well-known and widely practised in dairying districts to require but passing reference. But such is unfortunately not the case. How can a farmer walk over bis fields, day after day, and see dung pats, growing rank, sour grass, dotted thickly through his pastures, giving the surface a pimply, measly look, and feel satisfied? He must realise—hard, careful thinker as the,average farmer in New Zealand is—that there is, if all the space covered by the dung be put together, a considerable area of lost ground growing nothing but rubbish. Further, there is a waste of good manure. It has calculated by the leading authorities in New Zealand that the dung which fails from a dairy cow of 10001 b. weight in twelve months in New Zealand is equivalent in v.alue to 8 ewt. of sulphate of ammonia, 2 cwt. of ordinary superphosphate, and 2 cwt. of sulphate of potash. All this, remember, which costs at market rates nearly i-6, wastes for want of the bit of work necessary to spread the dung pati with a tripod-chain harrow or similar implement. An ordinary strong tine harrow used’ with ti-tree brush attached behind to scatter the dung i« also effective. Not the least value of the harrowing is due to the stirring of the surface and the dragging out of dry grass, moss, etc., by the tines. 'Two or three times a year i? not too oftsn to chain-harrow. It Is heat done after rain. '