Farm and Garden.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 243, 15 July 1876, Page 22

Farm and Garden.

A cow is kept, principally, for the value of her milk. She should therefore be bred for holding out her milk as long as she can with good feeding and due regard for health and stamina. It has been proved in the case of thousands of cows that have lived to a good old age that they can be bred to give milk ten months in the year, bear a good healthy and strong calf, and be ready for as good a milking seasoS the next year. We should seek for such ( cows, and discard those that persist m drying early, even if they do give a good mess for a S season. We have had cows that never gave over 30 lbs per day, and still gave a 1000 lbs more milk in a season than others that would give 40 lbs per day to the flush. ±ne Xrt should be made with the heifer to keep her in milk as long as possible, and cultivate this habit of holding out.—Bttfalo Live Stock Journal. Bambs, newly-born, are like infants, and require immediately food and warmth. How important is an assistance by cows milk in the absence of an immediate supply by the ewe A teaspoonful of castor oil saves many a lamb, by relieving the bowels of their first adhesive contents. I learned this from an experienced retired medical man, who treated his lambs as he would infants. My spare sheds afford comfortable quarters for a few days to the ewes and their lambs. The first fortnight of a lamb's existence and treatment has a most material influence on its future development, especially if it is to be sold as fine fat mutton when one year old. How many calves are lost when raised by hand by giving them cold food. The warmth of mother's milk would prevent scouring and death.—J. J. Mechi. M D Mulford, M.D., an eminent writer on diarrhoea in pigs, says that many swine breeders sustain considerable loss annually by their pigs dvino- from the effects of what is commonly called scours, caused by the bad quality of the sow's milk. The disease is more apt to make its appearance when the sow has fed upon dry corn or musty food. It generally attacks them within one or two days after their birth and seldom after eight or ten days. Dr Mulford says he has never failed to cure the disease by living the sow as much sulphur as will stand on a nickel five-cent piece once a day. It may be given in a little sweet milk or upon a amall piece of bread, and should be given one hour before feeding.— N. Y. Tribune. There is a right way and a wrong way, a hard way and an easy way, an awkward way and a skilful way, to catch and handle a sheep. A many men will seize the sheep by the wool on the back with both hands, and lift the animal clear from the ground by the wool only. Barbarous ! Let some giant grasp you by the hair of the head, and lift you from the ground bv the hair only ! Would you not squibble and squirm worse than the mute sheep does when lifted by the wool ? And would not there be a complaint of a sore head for a week or two ? If vou do not believe it, try the experiment. We have slaughtered a great many sheep m years past,' and when removing the pelts of such sheep as had been handled by their wool, we never failed to observe that beneath the skin wherever the animal had been caught by the wool, blood had settled. In many instances the skm had been separated from the body, so that inflammation was apparent. We have known proprietors of sheep to be so strict in regard to handling them that they would order a helper From thf premises if he were to catch a sheep oyThe wool on any part of the body Some owners of sheep direct their helpers thus .-

"Whenabout to catch a sheep, move carefully ' towards the one to be taken until you are sufficiently near to spring quickly and seize the Ws by the neck with both hands then, pass one hand around the body, grasp the.brisket and lift the sheep clear from the ground. The wool must not be pulled. If the sheep is a heavy one, let one hand and wrist be putaround the neck and the other pressed against the rump " We have always handled sheep m the wav alluded to. We never grasp the wool. Srsseke the sheepby a hind leg, then tow one arm about the body and take hold of the brisket with one hand. But ewes with lamb should never be caught by the hind leg, unless they are handled with extreme care. When sheep are handled roughly, especially if then wooHs pulled, the small bruises andjuries will render them wilder and more difficult to handls.— Practiced Farmer. SHEPHERD LIFE IN SCOTLAND. (From the Saturday Review.) Shepherd life in the Scotch Highlands and en the border hills is a very peculiar and trynig one all the year round. You are shooting over some wild grouse moor, and have started from a shootin|-box, which, though it certainly stands on the carnage-road, seems to all intents and purposes at the very back of the world. The church, the post-office, and the pixblichouse are a dozen miles away; there is not even a "merchants shop" within a radius of three times the distance. You have got to the end of your most remote beat after several hours of severe Exertion, and, having climbed to the summit of some heathery Pisgah, you rest upon your gun to contemplate the landscape. A «hreadaf white smoke, one of the rare signs of the prerence of man in those solitudes catches your eye in one of the valleys at your feet It goes UP from the chimney of a thatehed shieling, which is scarcely distinguishable from the long peat stack beside it, being built of precisely the same material. There is a strip of kaleyard, carefully fenced in against the red deerf and a patch of natural meadow running down to the burn before the door. > m You may distinguish a dwarf cow picking up a substance on the grass land, and, were you to make a nearer approach to the place you would be welcomed by a chorus of collies yelping at you from the roof as the most convenient vantage ground It is one of those shepherds' cots so much in favor with our Poets and with the exception of his wife, his children, and his sheep, the cow and he collies are pretty nearly all the.societythe occupant has from one year s end to the other From time to time he may take a child to the kirk to be christened, or he may indulge himself in a pilgrimage of many a weaiy mlTe to the publichouse on his own account or he may exchange an unusual greeting with the keeper although more probably he is at rend with keener and gillies on some difficulty about Se marauding of his collies. He has tolerably Sod wa-es, no doubt ; he may be warmly flothed and bountifully fed, and, having no means of getting rid of his ™™J>f%*?™ put by a snug sum in the savings bank. But he 6 co/demnel to live the life of a hermitwith next to no intellectual resources, although as like as not, he is an intelligent man who has come northward with one of those great Scotland sheep owners who are now monopolizmg the Highland grazing. Very possibly lie has Sen fafrly educated, which is what his children can scarcely aspire to be, all educational Acts to S contrary ; for you cannot legislate them into walkingtwenty-four miles a day from •fhp narish school. During the fine weather he LbyTomean S °badly off,>y S ically, although he has so much time for meditation that it must often hang heavy on his hands. He lies bask- £« on thf heather in the sun when there is any, and leaves his dogs to do his work. But as the days shorten and the snow storms set in, things become very different Seaiehing and scraping for the food which is somehoi to keep the breath in their bodies the flocks scattered stray into the> most.out-of-the-way nooks and corners; their instinct erves y them only too well in seeking out a refuo-e in the most sheltered places Their guarfian has been lying aU through the night listening to the howling of the storm ; when he has got up to peer anxiously from the little casement, 'he has distinguished nothing but a gray ritart might be felt. He has risen with the earliest Simmer of the dawn to find his doorway helped with snow wreaths that must be dug Sugh. Stumbling out into the open air, hejsees iust a glimmer of light as yet, and that is all, for thf air is thick with the broad floating snowflakes and blinding drift. The biting wind, twisted in the glens and valleys im=o eddies his been capriciously heaping up the tresn fallen snow. The storm-swept hillsides won d be "SJ enough lying for the sheep if they-could onlv keen in the animal warmth by huddling riiemselv P es together. But unluckily they have wandered into those more protected corners where the snow has been settling down in thickening layers, and £ last been discovered in their lairs 'by^ the in stinct of the sheep dogs they have to be extricated with infinite pain and labor.