FARMING DISCOVERY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22428, 26 May 1936, Page 6

FARMING DISCOVERY

DRYING YOUNG GRASS EXPERIMENTS IN ENGLAND [FKOIi A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT] By Air Mail LONDON. May 2 English farmers are watching with the keenest interest the final tests now being carried out of a farming discovery. It is based on cutting grass young and drying it artificially. Heavy •fertilising is.used to produce crop after crop of grass. On one farm at least in England the tribulations and anxieties of haymaking have come to an end. Mr. Clyde Higgs, of Hatton Rock, Stratford-on-Avon, this week threw his land open to a public inspection of the results of the new method. Ten years ago Dr. H. E. Woodman, of Cambridge University, discovered that young grass has a far higher nutritive value than mature grass, and that if it were dried artificially it lost practically none of its feeding value. Engineers then took up the problem, which was to devise a drying machine that would enable the result to compete economically with concentrated feeding Btuffs. Two machines have now been commercialised. The one at Hatton Rock is made by Imperial Chemical Industries. The cost of drying and baling a ton of grass by this machine is £3 17s 6a, inclusive of all costs. The dried grass produced is claimed to contain vitamins lacking in concentrated foods. The drier is practically fool-proof. It has a coke furnace by means of which air is heated to loOOdeg. Centigrade. Grass is fed into an oven in trays at the rate of four to five cwt. per hour. The dried product is then baled and can be stored indefinitely. The cdst of a large drier complete with baler is £750. A smaller one can be had for £6OO. The larger machine is an economic proposition for a grass lafm of v 125 acres, on which it is in use 120 days of the year for eight hours a day. > yet known how land will : react to the continuous cropping, but ex P er ience has shown no