ON THE LAND

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 62, 19 March 1929, Page 3

ON THE LAND

FARM AND GARDEN. tN STRATFORD AND DISTRICT. (By “ARARE.”) FARM. Scores of men who have spent their lives among sheep and who reckon they know all that is to b<jj learned about them cannot correctly answer a simple question with regard to hew many teeth there are in a sheep’s head. The fact is that they have never concerned themselves with anything but the incisor teeth and the coming and going of these as indicating age.

I once met a man who considered himself an expert and wh[o was considerably 'nonplussed by having this simple question put to him, (and was held up tc 1 ridicule for n °t being able to answer it correctly. In common with all other animals that chew the cud, sheep have eight incisors in the lower jay, unopposed by any in the upper jaw, a callous pad being substituted. Between the incisors and molars are grinding teeth, there is a space about an inch and a half. There are 24 ratlars, six on each side of each jaw: their crowns are marked with two double crescents, the convexity ■of which is turned inwards in the upper jaw and outwards in the lower Jaw. The lamb when born is devoid of incisor teeth, although the two central teeth are occasionally above the gum, even at this early age. When one month old the first set of incisor teeth are complete. The two front teeth of the under jaw drop out at the end of the first year. Six months later, the two next! to these are lost, and so on until the fifth year. The permanency of these incisor teeth is from this onward, more dependent upon the nature of the feed and country upon which the animal is depasturing than fcn any other conditions. In consequence of a certain irregularity set up by extraneous conditions, whereby a two-year-old sometimes has the mouth of a yearling it has become customary among some stock agents to describe sheep by their ages —3. 4,5, 6-year old instead of by their teetih—four-tooth, six-tooth, full-mouth or broken mouth. This has possibly grown up as a means of least resistance since some buyers have been in the habit of repudiating the age of certain sheep as described by their teeth. GARDEN. This is possibly the busiest Season in the year for the garden with the autumn rains come the great rush of work.

Hedges should now he trimmed, and where the trimmings are soft and tender these should he spread on ifo the hare patches in the garden, where they can be dug under. ,This is a simple method of adding humus to the soil and at the same time of getting rid of a considerable quantity of refuse. Tim lawn requires top-dressing in all bare patches: many lawns are i showing the signs of the two dry summers 'on end, and in not a few there are, very definite signs of grub. Where these are required for special games, e.g., croquet or tennis, they require very special treatment, bub where they are used simply for garden decoration then the best treatment for these lawns is a good top-dressing of basic slag. This brings on a heavy growth of white clover which is able to withstand the grub and incidentally give a fine dark green lawn when other grasses are brown and dry. The spaces in the vegetable garden that have finished producing a crop for this season should be dug up and sown with oats or Italian rye. When digging this 'over it is not necessary to remove all weeds; these should all be dug in unless they are in full seed or of a twitchy habit'. Continue to plant successtonal crops of cabbage and (Jauliflowcr for a week 'or so yet, and give them a good start with a liquid manuring of nitrate of soda for the next few weeks. It 1b a good plan to make a sowing of broad beans during this mon th —they will stand well through the winter and ofune away very eailj in the spring and so provide a vegetable when they /ire meat scarce and expensive.