SKIMMINGS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6670, 25 July 1928, Page 10

SKIMMINGS

News From Outside

Sheep for Australia. In order to ensure that New Zealand stud sheep entering Australia are of a high standard of quality, it has been proposed that a tax of £2 2s a head should be imposed on sheep which have not been passed by an inspector and tatooed. Advice of this proposal was brought by Mr H. T. Little, a North Canterbury sheep farmer, who returned from Sydney recently. While British’breeds of New Zealand sheep were much in demand across the Taman and more than held their own against the Australian-bred types, some sheep sent from New Zealand, those at the Sydney Royal Show, for instance, were not the Dominion’s best, and that was one of the Reasons prompting the suggestion of a tax on sheep which had not been passed and marked. Mr Little mentioned that in Australia all Corricdalcs were branded.

First Calves. Heifers should ealve at three years for beef purposes; for dairying the highest scoring cows, including champions of the British Empire in both Friesians and Jerseys, had calved at two years. In America the usual time to put the "heifer to the bull is when 15 months old. Making Things Hum. When dad decided to soil the farm he advertised it in a paper and got a reply from a retired businessman who had taken to breeding prize, pigs for a hobby and who intimated that he would bo along at an early date ,to inspect the property. Several days later a stranger drove up in ( a motor-car. ‘.fit’s ’ini,” said Bad to Bill, “leave ’im to me.” Bad rushed the prospective buyer around, but found him mostinterested in the pigsty, the dairy and the space between. To try and clinch matters. Bad reeled off a peroration he had been rehearsing; “She’s a dandy little farm, mister,” he assured the visitor; the best in the district an’ pigs grow to a ’elff)f a .size; it’s the air, or something. Now me fam’ly’s married off, we’ve been takin’ it easy; but when they was all here wo used to make things hum, I Can tell ycr. ” “Yes,” said the other dryly, “I’ve noticed the hum; in fact there’s too much of it. If you haven’t got that pigsty the regulation distance from the dairy next time I come around you’ll get a summons. I’m the new dairy inspector. ’ ’ —Sydney Bulletin. Oil in the Piggery Cod-liver oil, which used to bo the bane of the nursery, may. yet prove the blessing of the pig-sty. . The Norwegian Bepartment of Agriculture has ben conducting extensive experiments pith a view to arresting rickets in pigs. The disease is largely due to intensive fattening, and it was thought that one of its causes might be the absence of mineral salts from the meals—in Norway—of edible,roots, maize, soya-bean meal and skim ifiilk. It has been discovered that this otherwise ideal menu is lacking in the all-important vitamine A, the absence of which has induced rickets. Cod-liver oil and .herring meal have been found to bo rich in vitamine A, and the addition of these to the pig's diet has solved the problem. Neither flavours the flesh, fresh or cured, 1 . , Ousting Bats. A sure , way to rid the place of rats is to lightly sprinkle their runs with caustic sodai For a few days no result will be apparent. Then the rodent will disappear. And the talc of how their feet burned must be handed down from generation to generation, for never ‘have I known rats to return to premises so treated. Easier Ploughing. A novel method of reducing the resistance of the soil to the ploughshare has -proved experimentally successful iu England, and may bo worth trying where ploughing is done with tractors. Soil colloids are electro-negative; when a negatively charged plate is placed in the ground, water passes from the soil and is deposited on the plate. A wet ploughshare cuts better thau a dry; so a negatively charged plouchsharo being kept wet is easier to plough with. The experimenter found that-less power was needed to draw his plough when he had the current switched on. A dynamo driven by the tractor provides the current. 1 Blood Scours, in Calves. The following is said to bo a very excellent remedy for scours in calves. Isolate the sick calf from its mates aud place it in a clean, dry and warm shelter. The flrst thing in the morning on an empty stomach, give the sick calf one or two ounces of castor oil, according to size. Almost two hours later feed the calf by slowly drenching it with three or four pints of warm, whole milk. This is to keep up the calf’s strength, as experience has shown that when suffering from the malady they are very much off their food. About 3 p.m. drench the calf with as much powdered bluestone as you can put on a sixpenny piece, in a pint of cold water ;and about two hours later feed with warm whole milk, as in the morning, and then gradually got back on to the feed that was usual before the calf was sick. Defrosting Invention, A Melbourne syndicate, which has been experimenting for the past two years with a new chilling process, has now announced the perfection of a process for; defrosting. It is tho invention of an Australian engineer who has

had experience of the Argentine, Australian and Now Zealand meat trade, and a plant is being installed in Melbourne to demonstrate it. The inventor claims that he can extract the ice from hard frozen beef and seal the tissues, making it fit to be placed on the market within 24 hours in equal condition to the best chilled. Cost of handling in bulk is l-16d. per lb. and shrinkage of the treated meat is reduced to .25 per cent.