AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 11 March 1908, Page 6

AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

A witness before tho Conciliation BoanJ at Eangiora (says the Press) gave some interesting details as to wnat can be produced on small areas of good land. The farm he dealt with is about' eight acres and a-quarter in extent, and Jast year tie clover grown <m it produced £108. In addition he had sold £3 or £4 worth of pears; kept on© horse all the year and two others for a. certain perit)d; kept two cows; grew onequarter acre of carrots and parsnips; and! got two big stacks of hay. For the whole eection, including a house, he paid in rent and rates £31; threshing had cost £9, and it cost 23s to get the grain in. The first year he fanned the area he made £115, chiefly out of peas, of which" he had six acres, the yield being 40 bushels per acre, and the price got was 6s 6d p«r bushel. In. view o£ these facts, he was of opinion that farming such aa he did was profitable. A^ked by Mr Jones why, if that- was thei case, ho was at present on the labour market, the witness replied that he had not been able to get, enough land. " I have saved v little this last year or two," he added, "and I am not in debt as I used to be;', and I have a piano in the house. 1 ' New Zealand is to provide some of th« horses for the Indian army under the new scheme arranged by Colonel Goad, who visited Australia and New Zealand lasfc year. The scheme is to issue " commissions" to six firms in Australia "and one in New Zealand to supply the remounts. Hitherto 21 firms have been providing them. New South Wales breeders are complaining that the -effect will be to create seven combines and prevent competition. They have appealed to the Federal Prime Minister to receive a deputation in protest. The contract price for remounts is at present £45 each. Mr H. N. Lysnar, of Ahimanu, Poverty Bay, informed a Gisborne Times reporter that he has suffered a good deal of loss lately through wild dogs attacking his sheep. He states that one morning ro fewer than eight sheep were found witii their sides torn out. His men find sheep that have been worried until they are beyond recovery, and 1 those which are found probably form a small proportion of tho total, * as no account can be taken of the numbers which perish through being yarded up into creeks and water-holes. Mr Lysnar estimates that there are fully «,' dozen of those dogs roaming the district in the vicinity of his property. They travel in packs, and hunt the sheep at nightfall or in the early morn. Tmeir cunning in eluding pursuit is remarkable, as may be judged from the faot that although Mr Lysnar has offered £5 as a reward for every wild dog brought to him, tho total; catch in three months has been two. His theory is that the dogs have been bred in the bush from acme lost during pighunting and other expeditions. In appear* auce, he says, they resemble the Australian dingo, having sharp, erect ears, with hair growing right down to the hollow of the car. The traditions of the British farmer a* a growler were well maintained by a New. Zealand farmer (says the Timaru Herald), " The rain will do a lot of good," he said* " but not 6o much as some people expect. It will make the grass grow, and it will be soft and scour the sheep, and the froeta will be here directly and cut it all off." The causo of the death of cattle at Waiuku was lead poisoning through tho cattle eating paint on a new house. \ In prosecuting a man for cattle stealing at Graffcon, New South Wale 3, the police obtained the skin of a dead calf and! stuffed it, end the mother of the calfi identified it. The jury, however, disagreed. This practice is not new. Oarlyle speaks of " tulchan " bishops, « " tulchan " being a calfskin stuffed with straw and placed before the mother in th» bail so that she might contentedly " let down " her milk. Although in many parts of the Ashburton County the crops have been !:elo\vi

the yield of the previous year, a farmer in the Seaview district states that his crops yielded 12, bushels per acre in excess of last year's return, and, in addition, he has sold | hie wheat at Is 3£d per bushel in advance of the price ruling at this period last year. At the last meeting of the Ashburton Agricultural and Pastoral Association a resolution was passed and ordered to be forwarded to the Agricultural Department urging the Government to adopt a measure to provide that all skim milk sent out from dairy factories should be first pasteurised, with a view to combating the spread of tuberculosis. The secretary of the association has received a reply from the Hon R. M'Nab stating that the auestion of the pasteurisation of milk at dairy factories is , under consideration by the Government, | but it is thought that any additional ex- j pense imposed on dairy companies in that direction would be a hardship, and as the department has other means of dealing .with the spread of tuberculosis, the resolution regarding pasteurising milk cannot be entertained at the present time. Alhough the total number of sheep in the Ashburton County at the present time is thousands below the returns of 1906 and 1907, many farmers have been complaining that they are over-stocked. Aged sheep during the past month or more have been practically unsaleable, except for boiling down purposes, but the rainfall will make a great improvement in the market. The potato crops in the Ta.rada!e, Malmsbury, and Rcdesdale districts (Vctoria) are said to be -almost a total failure this year. In most instances the stalks have obtained phenomenal growth, and when viewed from the roads lead to the supposition ihat the <rrop3 are very prolific. Owners, however, «ay that the potatoes are no larger than marbles, and under several stalks there is not a 6ingle tuber of any sort. Most of the potatoes were planted in November, and growers are unable to account for the failure. Farmers who have been engaged in the industry for over forty years say they Lave never experienced a similar failure. Roumania is one of the interesting •countries of the world from the wheat producers' point of view, owing to the important part it plays in contributing to the world's wheat. How important is that part may be gauged to some extent from a. report recently supplied by the British Consul at Bucharest. Mr O. Wardrop^ states that the total capital, expressed in English currency, invested in agricultural machinery and implements is £8,400.000. This includes portable engines, £1,360,000; threshers, J3920,000; ploughs. £1.000,000; and carte and waggons, £3,480,000. Included in the machinery are 55 steam ploughs, 4539 portable engines driving 4585 threshers, 1258 maize-cleaning machines, besides hay-cutters, hay-presses, etc. There are in addition 357 portable engines used as mills. The number of ploughs of all kinds is 517,463, while there are 448,260 harrows and 11,924 implements for sowing. Harvesters number 18,451, of which 4335 have binders attached a very large number being owned by an^ cultivators. Of reapers .here are 1169; potato picker-?, 39; beetroot gatherers, 62; hay-turners, 168; and mechanical lakes, 1323. The population of Roumania is stated at slightly above 6,500,000, one-sixth _of this number being proprietors of cultivable land. A German professor has been experimenting with tansy tea as a remedy for bot flies in horses, with very^gcod effect. Ho found that a dose of this stuff, followed a few hours laler by half an ounce of salts, ■was •an almost certain cure. Regular grooming nright, of course, remove the eggs before they had time to get into fhe animal s internal economy ; but thousands of horses ■never get any grooming at all. The United States Department of Agriculture lately described some tests upon a quantity of live bots taken from a horse which had been killed by them. Put into sage tea, they died in 15 hours. This being too slow * process, they were tried with nitric acid. but that seemed to trouble them no more than pure water. Then they were put into an infusion of tansy ; that killed them in one minute. A horse suspected of being troubled with bots was given some tansy tea in the morning and a dose of salts in the evening. Next morning there were found in the stable U pints of dead bots, and tn« cure, after repeated trials, is now recognised generally as thoroughly effective. The actual dose of tansy is not specified in the reports. , Commenting upon the subject of the improvement of milk by giving a judicious amount of oata to cattle, a writer in a Danish dairy journal recommends the giving of oats in small quantities w " e " the milk is watery, adding that about ilb or 31b would be sufficient per head per day. This, the authority in question states. might be accepted with a certain amount of hesitation had it not been proved in a definite manner by experiments that a supplementary ration of a little oats has a very favourable influence, not only upon the amount of fa*tv matter, but also upon the taste of the milk and the butter made ; moreover, there is an increase in the production of milk and butter in consequence. _ The contention is supported by an experiment which was made on ten cows, divided into two groups of five eaoh. in such a way a? to ensure that their milk production was almost identical After a certain day the first group received, as a supplementary ration, about lib of oats

per head daily. Even as soon as the second day the fovourable influence of this method was apparent, and it lasted till the tenth day. The milk was very good, having a fine nutty flavour ; the butter was better, j and the cattle in good condition. v .