FARM NEWS AND NOTES

Taranaki Daily News, 3 November 1934, Page 24 (Supplement)

FARM NEWS AND NOTES

A VETERAN PIONEER. When visting South Taranaki recently Sir Arnold Theiler, the eminent veterinary scientist of South Africa, paid a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Emil Meuli senior at Okaiawa. Sir Arnold who, like Mr. and Mrs. Meuli, is a native of Switzerland, was pleased to see the progress made by compatriots. It was hard to believe, he said, that in the lifetime of Mr. and Mrs. Meuli former forest country could have been transformed into such a well-farmed property. He found Mr. and Mrs. Meuli, although the former is over 90 years of age, keenly interested in. animal public health and in all matters concerning farming generally. Poisoning of Stock.

Referring to the danger of cattle being poisoned through eating shrubs, either native or imported, a farmer stresses the necessity for farmers and others to exercise care in planting such shrubs where they can be reached by cattle. Laburnum, he says, has a very pretty flower but he would not advise farmers to plant it alongside a pasture gate, as he saw one farmer had been doing. The seed of laburnum was poisonous to stock, which would not eat them or touch the laburnum itself. When grass was short, however, and they were grazing near laburnum cattle were liable to pick up some of the seeds with the short grass.