ON THE LAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18331, 22 February 1923, Page 12

ON THE LAND.

KEW ZEALAND MEAT EXPORTS. I The shipments of frozen mutton and lamb from New Zealand to the United Kingdom, for the past season to a recent date were 2,663,700 carcases of mutton and 3,521,139 of lamb, ■ and about ; ! , aquarter of a million carcases of ; lamb vent to the United States on behalf of Armour and Co. The latter was no doubt mainly last season's lamb, which was held up in the absence of an export' license to that firm. There has not been a 'Jar quantity of beef killed and exported, but it was mainly good quality ox heel, and mora would have been put through, especially in Hawke's Bay, had it not been for the strike at the freezing works, which was general throughout the Dorrinion, near the end of the season. The average weight of both mutton and lamb carcases was generally lighter than usual, par tly through feed conditions, but iso doubt mainly because farmers realised on their lambs as soon. as they could. SEASONABLE WORK. The summer pruning of orchard trees should bo completed during the present month. Attention has already been drawn to the importance of throwing out and removing all shoots not required for or for forming the tree. The effects of simply 'winter pruning can be seen every season in the production of a host of young, sappy growths that only tend to darken the centres of the trees ' and prevents the .ripening and development of the buds of the fruiting wood. The removal of all needless shoots gives the sun a chance to reach all parts of the tree and ensures a. greater and more effective ripening of the material required for fruiting. To perform the operation successfully it is necessary that tho operator know the class of wood to be dealt with. The chief object is to bring the trees into a better condition of fruitfulness, and to encourage fruiting spurs to form throughout the trees, instead of leaving and encouraging a lot of useless sterile growths.' Advice has already been given for pruning of apples, pears and plums. Peaches need equal, if not more, attention on account of. the dense growth frequently made by healthy trees. With the peach and kindred trees young wellripened wood is essential to fruitfulness, srjstsuoo &sa\{% jo Suunud Jsununs aq; pus in pinching or cutting back all weak sterile shoots, or any that are crowding or crossing each other. The strong leading shoots too should be stopped, tor while the centre of the trees should be sufficiently open to allow of free circulation of light and air, it is essential that every part of the trees should be furnished with strong, healthy, fruiting wood. By such a system of pruning dwarf wellfurnished trees can be maintained, and these with fair treatment should seldom fail to produce a crop. If, on the other hand, the tree;; are allowed to go unchecked, the growth becomes so dense as to exclude the sun and air from the inside growth, the result being a lot of weak unripened shoots with scarcely any fruiting buds. When they are left in this condition until the winter pruning, it becomes necessary to cut away most of the fruiting wood or leaving the trees unpruned. With trees that have had reasonable attention, the present season has ■ been a favourable one for the setting of the fruits. It is regrettable, however, that such enormous losses have resulted from rot attacking the fruits, in very many instances before the fruits was matured. It is sincerely to be hoped that some effective remedy will soon be found for the destruction of this insidious fungoid. The budding of any trees intended for renewal should now be proceeded with. As stated in previous notes, to be successful the budding must be done while the sap is active, and the bark easily raised. MILK VEINS. Before anatomy was so well understood as it is to-day people believed that the milk veins of cows contained milk, and not blood, and in those early times dairymen and breeders looked to those veins for some indication of the quantity of milk passing through them. If the veins were largo and full, they naturally concluded that much milk was passing to the udder and that the yield would be good. As the yield was, in fact, invariably good in such cases, large, full milk veins became one of the chief indications of good milking powers in the eyes of those practical men of those remote times, and they are held to be so by observant breeders in all parts of the world to-day. When it was mohstrated that the milk veins did not convey milk to the udder (says The Farm), but that they conveyed venous blood away from it, this fact did not shako the faith / of practical men then, nor does it shake their faith to-day. A truth had been discovered in the fact that good milking propensities air© nearly always associated with large arid full milk veins, and if the theory underlying the fact has been proved erroneous, the fact itself remains untouched, and simply awaits a sounder interpretationso said the practical men who had discovered a great truth and relied on it implicitly. The new and better theoretical explanation for which they waited was not long delayed. It was shown that the nutriment derived from the food, eaten by dairy cows passed into the' blood stream, and that after each organ had received a sufficiency to maintain it in healthy and fit activity, the balance was disposed of according to the natural or hereditary proclivity of the individual or the breed, which was shown to ., be dependent upon a more or less lengthy process of artificial selection called breeding for desired ends. In the case of dairy cows, selection consisted in breeding from those cows that manifested the greatest natural tendency to divert sur- ■'. plus nutriment to the udder,, instead of : depositing it as fat over the whole »ody, ' which is the natural tendency of mea't- ' producing animals. It was demonstrated that before this natural divergence of suar- ' plus nutriment to the udder could take place a directing i nervous mechanism and an 1 ' augmented or supplementary mam- - raary blood supply to be brought into ( existence, with which an enlargement of the mammary gland would follow, as a natural sequence. j This enlarged mammary ' blood flow permeated every: particle of , mammary and bathed with a continually I milking stream of nutriment the many mil- ! liana of microscopic milk-forming cells con- ] stituting the greater part of the bulk of all . good mammary glands or udders and, : each one of these cells withdraws from ' , this stream of nutriment-laden blood the food it needs for its own physiological requirements and then begins to abstract ! the elements which go to the making of ( milk. These elements are stored up in the minute bodies of those cells until the nervous signal is given to transform them completely into the numerous milk channels that lead to the teats. This nervous signal is given when the act of milking, ' or better still, when suckling commences, and it may he withheld altogether for a .; time when nervous cows are roughly ' /treated in the cowshed, hunted by savage ! dogs and chased by little ruffians on gal- ' loping horses in the paddocks. As the whole of the blood supply ' of the udder cannot be seen by looking at a live cow in tho saleyard or show ' ring, nevertheless one can "form a fairly ' accurate opinion concerning it after it has passed through the udder, and this is done by noting the nature and capacity of th© vessels required to contain it, as s it flows back to the main stream. And < as the vessels that thus convey it back < are the "milk veins," we can fawn a very ' good idea from them of the amount of i raw material going to the milk producing ' factory, the udder, and the amount of 1 work that is done in it, by estimating the i amount of the outpouring of waste mater- 1 i&l. i IE much work is done in the factorv, '> if much milk is formed, there will be "a great outflow of waste matter in the form i of venous blood, causing the milk veins to - distend to their utmost capacity. vlf they ] are then large, perfectly filled, turgid and i tortuous, we are safe in concluding that ] the cow possessing them is a good milker . if she is youthful, healthy, and provided with an unimpaired udder, because the ; waste products of milk formation coming , from her udder are abundant, as indicated ; W *ao nature of her " milk veins."

} BRITISH HAY CROPS. Hay crops in Great Britain were very unsatisfactory in 1922. Most of the seeds hay <' was secured in good condition, but the bulk of the meadow hay ,was more or less weathered, and the quality of a fair proportion wag impaired 1 owing to delay in cuttings Seeds hay gave the smallest production since 1893, and about 400,000 tons less than in 1921. Yields were very light In practically every county, though they were relatively better in the north and in Wales than in other parts. Meadow hay yielded better than 1921, and the acreage was greater than 1921, so that the total production shows a welcome increase of 870,000. tons. The total quantity of hay produced 'in 1922 was about 5,800,000 tons, or 460,000 tons more than in 1921, but still some 1,500,000 tons below the average of the ten years 1912-21. . FOOD AND FLESH. The conversion of vegetable substances into the structure of animals is one oftho most interesting and certainly not, tho least important of those regular and j gradual operations in which the man On i tho land is engaged. It is to a certain, extent the finishing point to all his labours. It must bo admitted "that the rearing and fattening of our domestic animals are too often regarded as being something which everybody already knows all about. To this cause one can crace many of tho failures which aic tfet with. So far from being easily ut.dorstood, the nutrition of stock is perhaps the most complicated of all -r.>blems associated with stock grazing, on© in which 'those who seek to know the why and wherefore are as yet only groping their way. A sufficient amount of research has been made into this subject to enable the intelligent grazier to understand and to prevent tho evil consecftenees which fellow upon tho indiscriminate umj of certain feed. In building up the structure of an animal it is necessary to bear in mind that the elements of which 'the food is composed are of two different classes— those containing nitrogen, which enters into the composition of bones, hair, horn, wool, skin, blood, and muscle or flesh, and secondly, those in which nitrogen does not exist and which are destined to support the respiration and animal heat as well as to produce fat. All the elements which produce the flesh and fat of animals are. found to be gathered in their food ready to be converted to their several uses without undergoing any material change. In vegetable bodies we have vegetable albumen, "gluten, and casein, which are identical with flesh, the curd of milk, and the blood. The phosphates, common salt, etc., which exist largely in the bones, muscles, blood and milk of animals exist also in' plants, while the starch, gum, sugar, and oil, which constitute fat and are the elements of respiration, are likewise found ready formed in vegetables. The proportions in which these exist vary in different classes of plants. Hence the different results which we experience from the use of different kinds of food. Growing " animals require a different dietary from those ' which are fattening for the butcher. We wish to build up the bony structure, and to ensure a full muscular development in a growing animal. But in the case of an animal which is being topped off for the butcher, the dietary must consist not only of flesh-producing elements, but also of the fat-forming variety. Ther must at all times be a proper mixture of the elements of nutrition and of respiration. If an animal be v fed exclusivedly on one description of food, one, for example, which contains merely the elements of nutrition, that animal will gradually lose condition and die, in consequence of the absence of those elements which are necessary t<> maintain the temperature of the body and the production •of fat. In like manner, an animal cannot exist on food such as starch, gum, (or sugar, which consists merely of the elements of respiration, without any of the flesh-forming principles. One of the most common practical errors in the conditioning of stock is tho total absence of shelter or the insufficient amount allowed. This is a grave error, because it involves a waste of food. In respiration, or the act of breathing, the animal inhales and exhales the. asraospheric air. The air drawn in. or inhared, if dry, consists of nitrogen 79.16, oxygen 20.80. and carbonic acid 0.04. After the air has passed through, the lungs it then consists of nitrogen 79.16, oxygen 16-84 to 12. • carbonic acid 4.00 to 8- The amount of carbonic acid therefore is much greater after the air has passed through the lungs than it was when first inhaled. On an average the natural proportion of carbonic acid in the air is found to be increased 100 times after it is expelled by breathing from the lungs. AGRICULTURAL BREVITIES. The dairy industry offers many attractions to the young man just starting in business, provided he is not afraid of bard work and close application. The heifer should be taught the milking habit in her first lactation, says a practical Ayr breeder, who ought to know,' for his cows grow toward the 2000gallon model every yealr. "If the young thing becomes used to milking long and well she will improve her records regularly when she is a cow. If she once gains the notion that she. is to dry off early, she will keep the habit up and lose her powers, ; while her daughters will go one better, and not have any." In pig-breeding, ■ selection should be made on the points of good broad "back, at the loin, well-meated' leg down to the hock and knee joints. There should be as thick meat on the inside as on the outside of the leg, with good heart room, and straightness on the back from should ers to ham. .The hind half of the animal should be the largest and heaviest, for in that part lies the highest- meat. The butcher and meat sellers select the thick backed heavy-hammed pigs. The Illawarra cow Starlight of Upton, owned by Mr. H. Daly, produced 15,8164 lb. milk, testing 4.8, and equal to 753£1b. butter-fat, in a 365 days' test, completed in the New South Wales herd test last month. In the same period Mr. Perry's Guernsey, Golden Rose IV. (imp.), aged 10 years, had a record of 12,872i1b. milk, test 4.7, and butter-fat 6051b. Among the Government cows the Guernsey, Trust of Wollonghar, a five-year old twin daughter of the record holder, Hope, produced 12,058|1b. milk, 5.5 test, and 666£1b. fat. The milk records committee of the British Friesian Cattle Society has fixed the following standard of production as qualification for entry in the advance register of production kept by the society: For animals calving at 2£ years or under, 2721b. of butter-fat; 3 years or under, 2971b.*; 3£' years or under, 3241b.; 4 years or under, 3481b.; 4£ years or under, 3741b.; 5 years or over, 3991b. No animal is to be included in such advance register unless the butter-fat percentage figures for the average of not less than six official tests at regular intervals during the lactation period is up to the Government's presumed standard for butterfat. On farms where potatoes are grown something has to be done with the diseased ones, and also the small tubers, Figs are obviously the best kinds of animals to utilise such produce, but if fed in a »aw state they seem to give very poor results, while the pigs: themselves are not very fond of them. But if boiled, mashed up, and mixed with meal or sharps, they form a. very good food for either fat or store pigs, the meal,, of course, going added, for fattening animals. A new form 'of . insurance is' becoming popular in Great" Britain, where trie weather is liable to seriously affect gate receipts at country shows. Many associations last summer insured their , gate receipts against 'wet weather, and con-' sidering what a wet season it was, the insurance companies must have had a bad time. The Agricultural Gazette quotes the case of one society that paid a premium of £40, and received £250 on account of one day's rain.