FARM NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1029, 19 August 1871, Page 9

FARM NOTES.

SORE SHOULDERS. A correspondent says that the best thing that can be used for sore shoulders, &c, of horses is dry earth, which he has never known to fail. He was told to use it when a boy in Ireland — between thirty and forty years ago — and since then he has always used it in preference to all balsams. HOW TO >r VKE I'OUK (.iOOD, There is n< > way that pork can be made to be good and cheap as from pigs of the right breed, fed with cooked corn meal and sour milk from the age of four weeks till about eight months old. Pigs should be fattened in summer and killed at the beginning of winter. A given amount of feed will make one-fourth more pork in warm than in cold weather, and a given quantity of corn will make a fourth more flesh if cooked. FENCE POSTS. To coal-tar fence posts, place about a dozen of them on two logs, letting the foot of them project over two and a half j feet, then build a fire under the foot of them and let them burn until well charred. Have close at hand a barrel of tar with the end out, and sunk two-thirds in the ground. When the posts are blazing hot, plump them into the tar, and let them remain a minute. Be particular in having a light cover at hand to put out the tar if it should catch fire. Sawed garden posts treated in this way fourteen years ago i are as sound now as when put into the ground. COUCH GRASS. Quack, quick, or couch grass, whatever farmers may think of it in a garden or | cultivation paddock, affords most nutri-

tious food for stock. Still where land has to be tilled it is a nuisance, and a most difficult thing to get rid of. Those who take the trouble to practice it will, however, find the following method effectual : — Plough well in the autumn, and as soon as the ground is sufficiently dry, put on a good cultivator or harrow ; work up the roots and expose them to the sun, then put on a harrow with the teeth pointing a little forward ; when the drag gets full raise it up and drop the roots in rows, so as to gather them up and put them into heaps for burning or compost ; and, by thoroughly working the land every other day for six or ten days, the remainder of the roots will be extracted and the land brought under good cultivation. PREVENTION OF THE TURNIP PLY. The following top-dressing for preventing the ravages of the turnip fly was stated by the late Mr Fisher Hobbs to have been used by his steward for many years with perfect success. One bushel of white gas ashes, fresh from the gashoubo, one bushel of fresh lime from the kiln, six pounds of sulphur, and ten pounds of soot, well mixed together, and got to as fine a powder as possible, so that it may adhere to the young plant, The above quantity is sufficient for two acres when drilled at twenty-seven inches. | It should be applied very early in the morning, when the dew is Oil the leaf, a broadcast sowing machine being the most expeditious mode of distributing it, or it may be sprinkled with the hand carefully I over the rows. If the fly continues troublesome, the application should be re]jeated, but Mr Fisher Hobbs stated it had never failed where applied at night to Swedes, turnips, or rape. STOCK BREEDING. In breeding, the great thing to be regarded is pedigree. If you have your choice between two pedigreed animals, always take the handsomest and the best, but if you must choose between a somewhat inferior animal with a pedigree, and a perfect animal with an inferior pedigree, always regard the pedigree as far outweighing individual excellence. Do not be misled by the superior beauty of the underbred beast. What you want of him is to transmit the qualities of his ancestors. His beauty or want of beauty he carried in his owu carcase. The excellence or the defects that he will transmit to his descendants are an inheritance from his progenitors, and your business is much more with them than •with himself. In breeding for dairy purposes, for instance, there are certain indications by which we may judge (after a fashion) of the tendency of a bull to beget good milking cows, j But if we know that his dam and both his granddams, and all four of his great-granddains were first-class milking ows, wo may safely disregard the utter absence of milking indications in the bull himself. He is only a channel through which milking qualities are to be transmitted — a channel that will convej* nothing that has not been poured into it from above. The same is true of every kind of domestic animal, from chickens to horses. We must look for transmissible excellence, not necessarily in the animal himself, but in his ancestry for several generations back ; for although like often begets like, it always begets the likeness of some ancestor, one or more.