AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3743, 8 December 1925, Page 19

AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

The financial report of the Cook Hospital dairy farm during the month of October submitted to tlie board meeting on the 19th ult. showed that receipts amounted to £l9B 3s 10d, and the expenditure totalled £l2O 0a 2d, leaving an excess of receipts over expenditure totalling £7B 3s Bd. The official Journal of tho Rod Poll Cattle Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol.

£, October, 1925, gives interesting data in regard to wbat Red Polls are doing at Home and abroad. To-day they are pushing their way to the fore in various markets as a dual purpose animal. Tho secretary, 23 Warrington road, Ipswich, England, invites correspondence. There were, in 1923-24 47 woollen and tweed mills in Australia, an increase of •even over the previous year (states an Australian paper). The number of employees totalled 7532, an increase of 604 on 1922-23. Wages paid amounted to £1,043,298, compared with £891,801 in the previous year; 4,940,627 yards of tweed and cloth, 7,617,299 yards of flannel, and 1,206,005 blankets, rugs, and shawls were produced in 1924. Notwithstanding the establishment of now mills during the previous four years, the yardage of tweed and cloth fell from 6,350,499 in 1920-21 to 4,940,627 in 1923-24. However, lannci and blankets, rugs, and shawls have jrcieased. The industry is mainly centred In Victoria, where 4914 hands are engaged out of a total of 7532 in Australia. Unpleasant flavours in some of the cream sent into the Tolaga Bay butter factory led to the discovery that grazing cows on land that had been recently top-oressed was the cause of the trouble. The land had been top-dressed in the spring, and there had not been sufficient rain to allow it to soak Into tho ground. Coi sequently the cows '.ad be3n consuming a certain portion of it in their food (says the Gisborne Times). Similar trouble has also been experienced in the Waikato on pastures that had been top-dressed in the spring, and farmers there were recommended to do all their manuring in the autumn, as there was every chance then that the rain would wash it into the ground before milking season commenced. Nearly 2000 lambs are being sent Home by private individuals this year for the (jhiistmas season. Tho Meat Producers’ Board is attending to their delivery. A Masterton farmer remarked to a Wairarapa Times reporter the other day that, unless a plentiful supply of rain camo soon, there would be no fat lambs this season worthy of tho name. One farmer in the Oamaru district has already had four cuttings from a lucerne plot this year. Some of tho settlers in the Oamaru district have this season abandoned machineshearing in favour of blade-shearing. The reason is that they consider the machines ■hear too closely for the high country. Of the 300 and odd acres that have been reclaimed from the sea on the Auckland waterfront tho Auckland Harbour Board still owns about 175 acres—the rest has been taken by the railways and other Government departments. The unimproved Value of the board’s endowments, which are almost wholly reclaimed land, runs Into the large sum of roughly £2,750,000, which gives tho board a very handsome rent roll, and helps to make it tho Wealthiest l>onrd in the Dominion. One of the biggest land transactions that has taken piaco for a considerable time was the sale of the Makarika Station, consisting of some 14,000 acree, near Tokomaru Bay, the property of Mr A. F. Somerville. The land wag subdivided into approximately 2000-acre blocks, which were nearly all sold privately. When addressing the students at Solway School at Masterton on tho benefits of crop competitions. Mr W. J. M’Culloch, GovernBlent Instructor in Agriculture, stated that In the rich lands of Rongotia and Glen©roua no inntigola had over been grown fentil tho Bovs’ and Girls’ Ulub commenced 3e*itions and taught tho parents whet be done. Now there was a tremen-

dous area under cultivation for this class of crop.