THE PRESERVATION OF PASTURE.

Southland Times, Issue 18059, 31 January 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PRESERVATION OF PASTURE.

The followiug extract is from an American paper, and is reproduced for what it is worth— if it i"» worth anything [ at all — to the small sheep fanner here : — I "Itis au easy matter to make a pasture ! carry three times as many shoep as it othor- | wise would, by dividing it siud using ouch part for a reasonable time and changing frpm one to another before one is eaten ! down too much. So says the Sheep Breeder. When on a large pasture a flock will wander all over it, eating here and there nnd soiling the uneaten parts, and then refuse to feed longer, but spend their time in seeking Borne way of escape from it and generally finding one before long. Then the usefulness of the flock is gone, for once restless sheep aro always so, and a restless sheep is a bad sheep. For a twenty-acre (iold and 100 sheep we would divide the field into five parts and keep tho flock on each part until it is eaten pretty close, then would feed some grain feed for a few days, after whiih the flock should be turned on new ground. It would be very profitable then to run a harrow, over the pastured field, and sow a barrel of salt and one of ground • gypsum, with a few pounds of mixed grass seed per acre, as ten , pounds of timothy, . twenty pounds of, : orchard grass, ten pounds of blue grass, and as much of tall meadow oat grass. Then give another harrowing. The plan followed will soon make the land carry twenty sheep to the acre or 200 for the twenty all through the summer. w*. o£tezi x-ea<l of tli© fine permanent pastures of England, which will fatten a 1500 pound ox to the acre in three months and then finish another and which retain their perennial verdure and freshness for centuries, and we have onr fine Kentucky and other equally fine blue grass meadows, on which the finest horses, cattle and sheep are reared, and which have never been cut by the plough nor torn by the harrow, and these are by no means works of nature only. They are equally works of art, and what they are others may be under the same conditions.