AGRICULTURAL ITEMS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6755, 7 November 1928, Page 10

AGRICULTURAL ITEMS

Dairy cows and heifers should have access to a constant supply of good water and also salt.

When in-foal mares arc not required for work, they should ho provided with ample opportunity for exercise.

Success in growing cattle for the market depends to a largo extent on tho start which is given the calves. This, aside from the calves’ breeding, is probably tho most important consideration.

When sheep or lambs cat dirt, wool, or other foreign material it is almost a certain indication that they lack mineral matter in their diet. Usually it is lime, which is deficient. The situation can be remedied by including a little bone meal in the diet.

Mineral phosphates contain from 50 to 88 per cent, phosphate'of lime. They contain about two and a-half times as much total phosphate as low-grade basic slag. They should be so finely ground that at least 80 per cent, will pass through a sieve with 120 meshes to a linear inch.

In the case of land infested with bracken these must bo rcpqatcdly cut, when the fertilisers by strengthening the growth of valuable grasses will help to smother out the young bracken early in the season. A dressing of lime is also useful on this class of soil, as bracken arc only fond of soil deficient in lime.

Sheep graze very close to the ground and prefer the short, sweet, herbage, and therefore leave the coarser patches and tufts, so that unless the herbage is uniformally short and sweet, it becomes more and more patchy by continuous sheep grazing, although they will eat off many young weeds which cattle and horses leave.

In certain well-informed circles, says an Australian paper, it is considered that there may not be sufficient tonnage available to carry the Commonwealth’s wheat harvest overseas this season. It is expected tnat 133,000,000 bushels will be available for export, or about 2,000,000 tons. Chartering rates have risen from 395. 6d. to 40s. (id., and are expected to go higher.

Encouraging reports of tho trade in horses during the past months are reported from several quarters, says the Dairy (London). Speaking at the Liverpool horse parade recently a transport manager said that ‘‘ as a result of inquiries concerning our own experience and that of several--firms and Government departments, I am quite convinced that we have all been going wrong in this recent movement toward motors, and that it would be much more profitable to those people engaged in the distributive trade to utilise the service of horses in dealing with comparatively small and congested areas where they have frequent stops.”