FEEDING OR MOWING

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6668, 23 July 1928, Page 10

FEEDING OR MOWING

It would be very interesting to have the views of the modern farmer on the respective merits of feeding-oil: or mowing grasslands, especially when the two systems are pursued alternately. In other words what has the farmer of today got to say about keeping .pastures as pastures always, and haylields. as hayflclds and nothing else? In these days when farming practices; especially in connection with the use. of artificial > manures, have so greatly altered, it is at least interesting to quote the opinion of one. who,. in his day, 'was reckoned as a great authority on grassland farming. This was Mr Goring who wrote -these words about a century and a quarter ago: "I do admit that grassland should be mown, and fed alternately. It is certainly the way to go on longer without manure, and sis certainly the way to ruin a field in the end.'

"In order to maintain its proper quantity of stock, as we used to say, the land must be used to it. The more it keeps, the more it will keep—four this year, five the next. Give a’little manure more stock will follow, and so on until it has attained the nc plus ultra if that point is ever to be attained. Land that has been used to the scythe will not keep so much stock and so well as an old pasture, though it may have been better manured. Neither will old pasture produce so much hay as the other. Each will grow as it has been accustomed to grow; but the old pasture has an inherent sweetness in.it, as well Us virtue, which is hardly to be seen upon tho ground but it is to be felt upon. the rump and the sides of the ox, or to be discerned in the number of sheep which it maintains. ”