BUSH-SICKNESS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4462, 11 August 1941, Page 8

BUSH-SICKNESS

LABORATORY AT TAPUWAE. COMPLETE SUCCESS ACHIEVED. FINE STOCK BRED ON PROPERTY. RESULTS HAVING WIDE APPLICATION. New Zealand’s foremost “bushsickness” laboratory, the Government owned Tapuwae sheep and cattle station, four miles out of Poro-o-tarao, has on it to-day stock which would be a credit to any farmer anywhere, reports the King Country Chronicle. Probably one of the best flocks in the King Country, every ewe was born and bred on the property. Combined as this fact is with the successful results to many carefully watched experiments, no doubt can exist that the bush-sickness which 10 years ago had made this area worse than disastrous to farm can now completely combated, and the officers in charge stress that the measures necessary to overcome the cobalt deficiency are from a finaivial viewpoint a minor factor in the farming of the area. The lessons learned at Tapuwae have had, and will have in the futurfe, application over the enormous tract of country that is in the same volcanic shower area, a tract of country extending over much of the centre of the North Island and right over to Hawke’s Bay. Over the whole of this pumice shower the results of treatment appear to be splendid, while valuable lessons have been learned concerning other small& volcanic shower areas, including the Mairoa shower. There are being wintered on the 3328 acres of undulating to steep 1 pumice lands that comprise the , Tapuwae block 3000 ewes, 1750 hoggets, 240 breeding cows and heifers, and 425 other cattle. As mentioned above, the whole of this stock is in really splendid condition, a fact that reflects great credit on the present manager, Mr W. McLennan, and is a ■ triumph for his predecessors who pioneered the successful fight against bush-sickness. DECISION TO EXPERIMENT. That Tapuwae was about as bushsick a property as could be found anywhere, was speedily discovered when in August, 1930, it was purchased from the Tunnell Timber Company for eventual settlement with some 100 acres in poor grass and the balance in milled bush. To say that the results attending the initial farming of the property were disastrous is to put the case mildly. Mr J. G. McKenzie, of Te Kuiti, was the first manager for the Lands Department, and his experience was that despite the luxuriant growth following the bushburn the sheep withered and died. The only ray of hope was that about that time it was discovered that limonite had in tests been found to have a beneficial effect upon individual sheep on bush-sick ‘country such as that at Tapuwae. The importance of the matter was realised in some quarters, and the desire of Mr McKenzie to experiment upon a practical scale was agreed to. Tapuwae was the first place where field experiments were undertaken on a practical scale, and as promising results were achieved, the experiments were taken up later on other areas. We need hardly at this stage go fu«y into the detailed experiments , that were carried out over a period of years, and for that matter are still being continued to-day. All that was known at first was that limonite had a beneficial effect upon the sheep, and, as the soil had a definite iron deficiency, the first assumption was that it was this element of the limonite that was benefiting the , sheep. Later the discovery that it ■ was the cobalt has led the way to | alternative methods of control. PRESENT PRACTICE AT TAPUWAE. A new development is the use of cobaltised superphosphate for topdressing which is coming into such general use on country inclined to sickness. At Tapuwae, however, though cobaltised super is now used for topdressing the licks are still continued, for with such a huge area it is not practicable to topdress more than approximately one-third each year. The retention of the licks allows for ! a complete safeguard over the whole j area, for cobalt applied by way of ! topdressing has, like any such application, a necessarily limited* period of effectiveness and it could not be expected that areas topdressed only once in three years would retain any sign of cobalt. The difficulties encountered in the experiments are too numerous to mention, but they were very real. No* the least of these was the need of demonstration in the early stages of the value of continuing the experiments—it looked to most like throwing good money after bad. Men with bitter experience on sick country were genuinely of the opinion that such areas could never be economically farmed. A CHALLENGE—AND THE RESULTS. A most interesting sequel to this attitude was a challenge to the Minister of Lands, the Hon. F. Langstone, by Mr P. Kearins, a man with much experience in farming sick land in the Kopaki district, as to the backing for the claims made by the Department. This was in 1936, and for the following five years 380 acres of Tapuwae i personally selected by Mr Kearins were kept apart from the rest of the station as an experimental area. Briefly, the conditions attaching to the challenge were that the Department would turn a flock of ewes on the area and breed from their progeny until such time as the first crop of ewe lambs were cast as four-year ewes. During the experiment no lick was to be used other than limonite and no treatment given to the area other than that expected under normal farm practice. Mr Kearins personally noted the results each year, and though there were fluctuations in the condition of the stock throughout the experiment, I the final result as evidenced when

making his inspection this year appears not only to have made the test a proof of the Departmental contention made in 1936, but also brought out the fact that the complete efficacy of limonite depended on all sheep being lickers. The wastage shown in the first crop of lambs at the wind-up of the experiment would seem to show that lambs of licking mothers learned to lick and in their turn drew’ their own lambs to the lick boxes. OTHER CONTROL MEASURES AVAILABLE. Now that it is definitely known that the minute portion of cobalt in limonite is the beneficial element intreatment of bush-sickness, all sheep can readily be treated, whether limon-ite-lickers or not, either by the topdressing of pastures, drenching with a cobalt solution, or by adding a small portion of cobalt to a lick of straight salt which is readily sought by all stock. Mr Kearins in issuing his challenge and the Minister in accepting it have both undoubtedly contributed in no small w r ay in eliminating the concern that was previously felt in respect to such sick areas as Tapuwae. Confidence in the results is also shown by the policy of the Land Development Branch, which assumed control of Tapuwae in July, 1938. This policy is to extend the breeding flock at Tapuwae instead of reducing it as might have been expected if complete confidence in the remedial value of cobalt w r as lacking. As all surpluses can readily be absorbed by other areas now in the process of development, these are sold to such areas at market value, and though on this account they are not seen at the regular district sales, it can readily be said that as good stock as anywhere else in the district come off bush-sick Tapuwae. FARMING AT TAPUWAE. > Many other features are of interest

at Tapuwae, until recently isolated by having only clay road access. It is high country, pure pumice land that had carried heavy bush—and once the benefits of the bush-burn began to leach from the soil there was a tendency for the pasture to run out. With manure, however, that tendency ceases completely, and even in the middle of wfinter the country looked well, and it throw’s a good flush of feed in the warmer weather. To enable manuring to be carried out much logging up has been necessary in the last couple of years on this exceptionally heavily timbered country; the bulldozer has been very successful in clearing away stumps and surface timber for crops and hay.

Nor are the experiments confined solely to bush-sickness last winter the relative merits of the respective combinations of hay and ensilage, and hay and swedes, as winter fodder were tried out, and the experiment appeared to give a slight margin in favour of the hay and ensilage ration. All three fodders have been grown for the current winter, however, and the sw’edes this year are a really splendid crop, though grown in what appeared to be pure rubbly pumice without very great quantities of manure—2 cwt of lime and 2 cwt of superphosphate were applied to the acre.

In the main the contour of the land is easy—experience has shown that cold steep faces do not hold well in light pumice, but practically the whole area, though abounding in stumps and surface timber, is completely clear of weeds save for a negligible amount of waterfern. Much hard w r ork, much patience, and above all the persistence with which the problem of bush-sickness has been tackled has made Tapuwae a fine station.