HORSE VERSUS MOTOR POWER

Northland Age, Volume 14, Issue 44, 12 July 1917, Page 4

HORSE VERSUS MOTOR POWER

An indication of the rapid extension of the use of the motor tractor for farm work in the Dominion is shown by the fact that one firm has already sold 42 during the past year. This is only one of a number of makes on the market, the other firms have no doubt been able to dispose of a considerable number. Mr Primrose McConnell, the writer of practical farm notes in “The Dairy,” expresses the opinion that there is not much doubt that after the war —if not before—the farmmotor is coming to take a large share of the work of the farm, and that if the horse is to hold his own he, and the man who works him, will have to quicken their paces or go. The heavy cart breeds have also been the slow ones, and it is prover-

bial that slow horses make slow men. The ordinary pace with the plough, for instance, is from a mile and a half to two miles per hour: any farmer can find this out for himself by calculating the length of a furrow slice at the usual width contained in an acre area—assuming an acre to be a day’s work. Contrast this speed with that of a motor. On suitable land it is possible to go up to five miles per hour, though ordinarily some threa-and-a-half is the adopted rate. This is at least twice as fast as horses, and is a great count against the use of them. We shall never do without horses altogether, adds Mr McConnell, and it is perhaps just as well. A friend of his tried to do so, and actually ran a farm for a year without a single horse on it, but found he needed one or two for the smaller jobs, such as horse-raking and horse-hoeing, which were too small for a tractor to do. The one point of speed, however, is a great matter. One man can drive a motor plough and do at least five acre? daily—as much as five men and ten horses will do in the ordinary way—and against a competition of this sort horses must quicken their steps. Probably there is not much th t can be done in this direction in New Zealand, where the active Clydesdale is the popular plough horse. In England, however, discussions are taking place as to how more active horses can be bre< I as the Shire horse is too slow in this bustling age. From various parts of Great Britain come reports of the extended use of the agricultural motor, and so far there is no mention of men not taking kindly to their use, as was the experience of a Canterbury farmer. The motor is, however, more for the use of a man with a mechanical turn of mind than for a love:' of horses.

[ln view of the publicity accorded to the tractor by the recent public trial in Kaitaia the above article on Motor Power from the “Weekly Press should be of interest.]