SHEEP ON DAIRY FARMS

Southland Times, Issue 23444, 26 February 1938, Page 19

SHEEP ON DAIRY FARMS

Full Utilization Of Pastures In the January issue of the New Zealand Journal of Agriculture the use of sheep on dairy farms is discussed in a special article. During recent years the number of dairy farms on which some sheep are being kept has increased. Such a change in farm economy has aspects that deserve close attention, states the writer. In some respects the keeping of cattle and sheep on the one farm has distinct advantages. For instance, it is held that certain pasture plants which are neglected by cattle are relished by and serve as good fare for sheep, so that a combination of sheep and cattle in grazing tends to make for the fullest utilization of typical mixed pastures. This was exemplified several decades ago in the classical experiments of Somerville at Cockle Park, England, in which more meat was obtained from an acre of pasture on which sheep and cattle were grazed than from an acre of similar pasture on which sheep alone or on which cattle alone were grazed. Against this is to be set the fact that in some instances unsatisfactory and disappointing results have been obtained from the introduction of sheep on to dairy farms. The point of practical importance is that such regrettable results are inevitable if the feed supply fails either in quantity or quality at critical seasons, and particularly during the winter and early spring. This fact needs to be weighed in conjunction with the further fact that on the majority of dairy farms there annually are periods of critically low supplies of feed. On such farms if no change in the provision of special feed (feed for use in the winter and early spring) is made, then the introduction of sheep simply makes an already bad position still worse. Field experience shows that the farms on which the keeping of sheep and the keeping of dairy cattle are combined most successfully are almost always, if not always, the farms on which the provision of feed for use in winter and early spring receives more systematic and more extensive attention than it does on the average dairy farm. When sheep and dairy cattle share an inadequate supply of winter feed two undesirable results are common—the cattle suffer more than the sheep, and the pastures are subjected to an unduly long period of close grazing which causes a set-back in their vigour from which they but slowly recover. Summed up, whether it proves profitable to keep sheep on dairy farms depends, during a period of reasonable stable prices of stock, to a considerable extent upon management, in which feeding is a most important factor.