AROUND THE FARM

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1523, 28 February 1901, Page 53

AROUND THE FARM

The United Statics Department of Agriculture has arranged to place one of the veterinarians of the Bureau of Animal Industry at certain centres in Great Britain with full authority to test all cattle intended for United States ports, and to issue certificates of health, which will be accepted at quarantine stations in America, so that they can be tested in their own pastures or cattle sheds. * *■ * «* ■ «r Keeping lime fresh or “quick” for any length of time is a very difficult matter. The only way to do SO' is to keep it under cover and in a perfectly dry atmosphere. The protoxide of calcium, commonly known as lime, lias a powerful affinity for water, and takes it up with such avidity as to absorb moisture from the atmosphere.' When water is sprinkled on “quick” lime it heats, cracks, swells, falls into powder, and forms hydrate of lime, otherwise slacked lime. These results -are l as surely, if more slowly attained, if the lime is exposed to a, damp atmosphere, and only by excluding moisture can lime be kept fresh.“The past winter maize exported from the United! States to Denmark,” writes “Hoard’s Dairyman,” “has cost the dairy farmer of that country 3s 4d a, bushel. In addition they import cotton seed ineal, linseed; meal and sun flower seed in liberal quantities. Coal for the creameries is imported from England. Every butter maker employed in their creameries must be a, graduate from some on© of their dairy schools. The creameries all have handsome, substantial buildings, and are equipped with the best of modern apparatus. Pasteurising is closely followed all over the country, some creameries treating the cr ea m after it comes from the separator, while others pasteurise the milk just a | comes from the farms. In spite of all the heavy expense in producing milk and manufacturing labour excepted, the Danish dairy farmers go ahead, and; say dairying pays, while some Americans grumble and say there’s not much in dairying. * * * * * In the old times the plan was to allow the pig tO' be a store, or, in other words, a more or less starved animal for at least twelve months, after which it was put up to fatten for a period of four to six months, when it consumed •an enormous quantity of food, much of which was required to enable the pig to regain that flesh which it ought never to have lost, and which might have been retained at a tithe of the cost of renewal had the animal been even humanely, not to mention judiciously, fed. The resultant fat pig was an immense animal, strong in bone, coarse in hide, and several inches thick in fat on the back and ribs. This- mass of fat might have been necessary in the consumption of this large, heavily salted, bacon, since it would be impossible in the present day to secure anyone to consume the hard and extremely salt lean flesh of the pig of ilhat period. The marvellous improvements and increase in our stock papers, and the publications, of the proceedings at the foreign Government agricultural schools and colleges, added to the increase-—totally inadequate though it, be—-in tne number of agriculturists who read, have all had a share in causing greater attention to be paid to the more general study of judicious and economical feeding of stock, particularly of pigs, which formerly were too frequently looked upon as necessary nuisances. With regard to the question or the amount of food! required at the different. stages of fatness of the pig to produce a given increase of weight, in years gone by most farmers would have asserted that a, certain, weight of food would, under ordinary conditions, give an equal increase of weight if fed to pigs weighing 4001 b. as if fed, to one of 1501 b; whilst some farmers would go even further, and declare that a greater increase was obtained by feeding a certain weight of food to a, large pig well nigh fat than to a, comparatively small one not m high condition. If asked to state the grounds on which they had, come to this conclusion, their reply would be that their experience had proved such to be the case. No attempts would have been made either by weighing the food consumed' or the animals at the various stages of fatness; the eye alone was trusted to, and in this, as in many other instances, t'hei eye had deceived the owner.—“ Australasian.” ***** In reference to the recent report of the conversion into “prime Dorset butter” of butter imported from Australia, a correspondent writes : “The growth in the production of ‘prime Dorset butter’ has been marvellous these last ten years. So vast, in fact-, has the industry now become that it may well be regarded as one of the wonders of the closing decade . of the nineteenth century. The striking feature of this growth is that it has advanced year by year, notwithstanding that the number of dairy cattle in Dorset has been practically,unchanged, that the manufacture of cheese has been greatly on the increase, and that the milk trade with London has, yearly” assumed 1 larger proportions. There is the mystery. There is little doubt that Australian dairymen are not alone in fmdmg their butter palmed! <off on an unsuspecting public as the! produce of Dorsetshire. Irish, Danish, and) Nor.un(^erS° a like metamorphosis.”