AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1852, 20 May 1887, Page 8

AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

There is a movement on foot among English horse-breeders to induce the army authorities to buy two-year-olds for military purposes, and have them matured and broken by the Government authorities. It is also said that Colonel Ravenhill and others interested in supplying of remounts are inclined to look favourably upon the proposition. The adoption of such a measure could not fail to operate favourably in helping to tide over the existing agricultural depression in England by affording the farmers more speedy returns for their outlay in breeding foals and relieving them of the labour of rearing them till they are three, three and a half, or four, as they are compelled to do at present. It would also have the effect of supplying the army with horses that would be thoroughly trained for their work as soon as they were ready to enter upon it. Besides this it is altogether probable that horses trained and worked solely for saddle purposes would make better and hardier troopers than those that had been broken to harness and worked in that way.

It is stated that the Maxlborough rabbits do not take the phosphorised grain so readily as they used to do, and crushed carrots soaked in arsenic, which they once regarded as a delicacy, though a fatal one, they will not touch at all. The atoms of carrot become so dried up in the sun that they cease to be tempting. It is said that phosphorised rye is more palatable to the rabbits than any other sort of grain. The little animals are considerably stinted at the present time in their natural food. They have no grass to eat, and they have barked every tree and eaten every leaf they can get at as far up as they can reach.. It is curious to see the paddocks covered all over with ssratchings where the rabbits have actually been grubbing up and eating the dandelion roots.

Sir John Lister Kaye has on had a mammoth farm project, which he proposes to launch in the Great North-west. His plan is to purchase blocks of lands of 20,000 acres from the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and the Canadian Government in the Red Deer River district, north of Calgary. To stock the lands with 70,000 head of cattle, imported pure polled Angus ; to import Clydesdale brood mares and thoroughbred stallions ; to buy 21,000 head of sheep, " and improve them with pure Cheviot and Leicester rams and ewes;" to purchase the same number of pigs, and put them through a like improving process. The lands which have been examined for the purpose of being formed into this gigantic farm or series of farms are situated at Rush Lake, Swift Current, Gull Lake, Crane Lake, Kingarth, Dunmore, Stair, Bantry, Nomaka, and Langdon. In water and herbage they are reported to be all that could be desired. To carry this gigantic scheme into effect, a capital of 5,000,000d0l (£1,000,000) will be required, the greater part of which Sir John Kaye is reported to have secured.

The weekly returns for the seven weeks ending February 12, 1887, published in the London Gazette, show that in Great Britain during that period 80 new # outbreaks of pleuro-pueumonia were reported on, and 390 cattle attacked by it. This js an increase of 19 in tije number of outbreaks, and of 106 in the animals attacked, as compared with the returns for the corresponding period of last year. With this increase of the disease in Great Britain there has been a very marked decrease in England, and the present unsatisfactory state of matters in connection with this disease is entirely due to Scotland, in which it has for some* time been more prevalent than in England.