AGRICULTURAL.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIC, Issue 13438, 9 November 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

AGRICULTURAL.

(A. novel developmenti of American horse-breeding is shown in the evolution of a national tvpe i>f horse, as sketched bv Mr Arthur Chapman. It appears that the best- imported breeds very speed dy degenerate- on American soil. The United States Government has therefore resolved on developing from native breeds a tyjw that can be maintained and successively improved. The uplands of Colorado have been selected as the most suitable, breeding and training ground. The retired wealthy fanner can start his boy with a small fortune, and say, "Now. there is the* farm, it is yours. Go to work." But suppose the son does not want to be a fanner. Will he succeed? Not likely. Another farmer who has worked hard and spent his earnings in making a beautiful home, and in educating his children, has no fortune to bestow upon his son. He can not even loan him a sum of any consequence. But- he has instilled into him from babyhood a love for the farm. He has taken pains to open the secrete of nature to him. The boy has never considered farm life, a drudgery and starts upon his own career full of enthusiasm. Nothing will keep that young man down.

Indications of potato blight have appeared in the Palmerston district (telegraphs "The Dominions" Manawatu correspondent) . Mr Simms, of the Agricultural Department, who was engaged inspecting orchards in Marton, noticed very little trace- of the potato blight along the coast, but the only crops that have appeared above ground are in garden plots. The main crops are not yet planted, owing to the wet. A good deal of curiosity has been evinced from time to time as to the results Mr J. Davis, of Wirokino, had obtained from the enormous Roscommon sheep he selected in Ireland some years ago and imported to the colony. Mr Davis stated that he was thoroughly satisfied with the experiment, both from a mutton and wool point of view, although he thought the sheep were even far huitable for the former purpose, for, besides giving a large carcase, the meat- was very succulent. The wool realised Is l£d per lb at Home last season, and the yield.was about 131b to 141b per sheep. The constitution of the sheep was splendid, as is natural from the severe test their ancestors had to go through in the exposed localities they were brought up in. Personally, he rather favoured a crossbred- lamb from, the Roscommon as likely to give the most satisfactory results. "TheJ iuckiestl invention .in history,"' said a patent official to a reporter of the "New York Express," "was that of barbed wife. It came about by accident. Isaac ' L. Ellwood was the inventor of barbed wire. In his youth he lived in De Kalb, 111., and having a neighbour whose pigs trespassed on his garden, he jut up one day a wire fence -of his own make. This fence had barbs and points on it; it was queer and ugly—but it kept out the pigs. It was a real barbed wire fence, the first in the world, and there was millions of money in it, but young Ellwood and his friends laughed at its freak appearance. One day two strangers saw this fence,:perceived how well it kept out the pigs, realised how cheap it was—realised,. in a word, its value—and ordered several tons of it from Ellwood. Furthermore, they contracted to sell for a term of years all the barbed wire he could produce. Ellwood borrowed 1000 dollars, and set up a little factory. A few years later on he had paid back that loan and was worth a small matter of 15.000,000 dollars besides. MOTORS IN THE HARVEST FIELD. A remarkable demonstration of harvesting by motor machinery, according to "The Times," was given in. Lincolnshire recently. The trials took r -place' on one of the. largest farms in "the Kingdom, that of Messrs Dennis Brothers, of Kiston and London, potato growers and merchants. The feat of obtaining baked bread from: corn which had just before been standing in the fields was accomplished in about four hours. More remarkable still was the full amount of the work done in so' short ='a time. An acre of standing corn was marked out in the cornfield. This~ was cut. bound, threshed, and ground by ■the:motive power of an agricultural tractor working with a petrol engine. An acre of ground was also ploughed, cultivated, drilled, harrowed, and sown with a new crop within 7£ hours. This constitutes a world's f'record"; and it is to the credit of the country that not only the tractor,, but also the thresher, drum, mill, cultivator, drill, and harrow were all British. The* harvesting machine came from Canada, so that the feat is, therefore, an Imperial'one. The tractor is of 50 horsepower, and was built- by Saunderson, of • Bedford. At 11.35 a.m. the tractor started, its work by taking the threshing drum into the cornfield. . Five minutes later it began to. draw two Massey Harris harvesters- through the corn. Half a dozen men walking behind stooked it, arid in exactly 15 minutes what had been an acre of growing crop was standing on the field, cut and stooked, ready to be placed on the cart which the tractor proceeded to draw round the field. By 1 o'clock the corn was lying at the side of the threshing drum. " The tractor then*got into position to drive the thresher by means of a belt.. At ten minutes past one a halt was.called for luncheon. As soon as the threshing had begun, the flour was seen to come out of the mill, which was being worked off a pulley on the threshing drum. A move was then made to another field for the ploughing. It took an hour to take the plough down, and almcst punctually at 3 the ploughing began, with a three-furrow plough cutting furrows 12in wide and 7in deep. Owing to an overheated bearing a halt of half an hour had to be made, and the ploughing was not, therefore, finished until 4.45. A cultivator and a drill were then hooked on behind, and at 5.30 the acre was ready for the narrow, which had completed its work by 6.45, thus bringing to an end a nm~t remarkable farming display. After the deduction of the interval for luncheon and the stop due to overheated bearing, the net time was 6hr 4Cmin. FAT SHEEP PRODUCTION. THE MANAWATU POSITION.' There was a good deal more in fat-lamb raising seven or eight wears ago, so far as the Manawatu was concerned, than there is tc-rday. Such, at least, was the opinion expressed by Mr F. S. Mcßae, of Stoney Creek, who has had a good deal to do with the industry for tthe past twelve years or so. This alteration in the position of affairs is due to several caures. In 1895. or thereabouts, the fanners of the district were only getting 7s for their fat lambs, so that very few bothered to breed them. But about "three or four years later things began to mend and very quickly the industry became more profitable than it Bas eveV been before or since. In 1898 the farmers could buy their stor? lambs for about 6s or 6s 6d, and, after fattening, could easily. sell them in the open market for about 10s. This meant a decent margin to work upon, and thefat lamb trade was a good thing. Bnt during the last two or three years ' the industry has gone down again. Sfrf»r» lambs have" become- very dear, while the prices for fats have not increased proportionately, so that it hardly pays to fatten, certainly not to the ext:-nt it used to. Stores now cost from 9s to 10s, while after fattening they will only bring about lis 6d or ia> at th» outside, so that there is really a very small margin left. It just means that the man who puts in a crop of rape cannot get anything like tlie return

per acre that he used to, owing to the disproportionate ' rise in the prices of stores and fats* .So the natural result, is that he dote not put- the rape in to anything like, the extent of eight years ago. At that time, about- 1899 or 19G0, there were a good many in the trade. Messrs Thomson Bros., of Kairaiiga, were the biggest- fat lamb breeders in the districtthen, though Mr Mcßae himself did a good deal. These gentlemen were among The first to go into the industry at all extensively. A good number of others, of course, "took a hand also, but the majority dropped out as dairying became more general. The spread "of dairying, together with the decrease of profits already referred to. were the chief causes of the decline in the fat lamb trade.

Another point mentioned was that some considerable time ago splendid breeding ewes could be purchased at 6s 6d, bub now the price was another 10s. This meant that farmers had come to the time when they simply, had to keep a few of their best- ewe lambs back for breeding purposes. .. • Making comparisons between the present and the time when the industry was at its best, Mr Mcßae stated that then he used to turn off nearly 3000 fat lambs per year from 250 acres* while last year the number had come down to- about ICOO. This was simply because there was notthe money in it that there used to be. During the present year he did not expect that he would turn off more than 300 or 400. Nothing else, he. thought, could be expected, for, while he had made as much as £8 per acre by growing rape for fattening, he now could no* get more than £4 or, at the outside, £5. By devoting the land to raising oats for chaff, for instance, he could net '£7 per acre, so that it was not likely that much attention would be paid to fattening. As a matter of fact, those going in for the trade had a better time when sheep were low than they had at present, when the margin between stores and fats was so reduced. Mr Mcßae said he used to use a Southdown ram on a crossbred ewe, r.s he found that this combination produced the best- lamb for fattening purposes. English Leicester rams came next- in his estimation. But now .that wool was such a high price, it also had to be taken into consideration, so that the English Leicester was really more suitable than the Southdown. It was no good .using ewes that were crossed with Southdowns, because they would not give the wool, this just being where the English Leicester came in. STOCK BREEDING. THE POWER OF THE SIRE. Zealand Times.") The aim of all breeders, .no matter what class of animal they deal with, should be —and is, in the case of the best men —to enbeavour to steadily improve the standard of their stock, not only in the direction of virility and. general consitutional power, bub also in. money-earning capacity. These dual objects cannot be obtained by working on mathematical lines, so to speak, for undue attention to the money-earning power of the animal today, while it may at the time bring about the desired result, may have in it great potentialities of evil for the progeny of that animal in succeeding generations, and this fact must always be borne in mind. Man, by the exercise of care, judgment and foresight—above all, judgment —can do much in the direction of assisting nature to produce a class of animal calculated to give the very best financial return to- its owner, but his puny methods are helpless when exerted against natural laws, arid undue development of any one particular function of any particular class of animal must in time result in a corres-; ponding deterioration, of some, other bodily/ function necessary for the proper maintenance of the body as a whole. Viewed from the standpoint of the future of our stock, and not from the selfish point of view of the man who wants to make as much as he can to-day, and doesn't care a hang for the troubles of his great-grandchildren it- is absolutely essential that breeders, while always doing their best to increase the revenue-producing capacity of their stock, should never lose sight" of the fact that, while doing so, they must all the time uniformly maintain, the general constitutional powers of their animals to the highest pitch. Present day methods offer many object lessons which, to the knowledgable and critical observer, afford food for thought, not always of a cheerful character. The thoroughbred horse which is incapable of winning a race over a mile, the purebred dairy cow which is (speaking from a physical point of view) deteriorating into a weakly-constitutioned milking machine; the sheep, which,in the first two years of its life possesses no_ latent resistant power wherewith to~ combat the attacks of internal parasites, or of a wet winter, or who produces wool inferior in quality or quantity, are all, sometimes living, sometimes dying, instances of the incontrovertible, fact that man always gets left- when he tries to get too far ahead of nature. But after all, New--Zealand has far more sinners in the direction of omission than of commission, and the general farmer, who does not make a speciality of the breeding of purebred stock for sale as such, is far more open to criticism, thanis the specialist. He tends towards the opposite extreme, and is too often culpably careless in his metods of stock-breed-ing, and thereby is laying up a store of trouble for his successors in future generations. Take, for instance, the dairy herds of the colony. How often does one see not only a herd of cows showing evidence of all sorts of crcss-breeding, but, what must necessarily tend to make what is already a bad matter into a iroree one, these cows have running with them a most inferior bull, often crossbred himself, at other times a degenerate specimen of the purebred animal Now a crossbred cow, while not necessarily an unprofitable animal, from the point of view of her own milk yield, is a mest unprofitable cow to breed "from if mated with a mongrel bull. It may be said that the probability is that under" present- conditions her calf would be killed in any' case, but all the calves cannot be killed, and a good number of such badly-bred beasts are bound to be reared, and to become, in time, worse mongrels than were their dams. How different would be the case if the cows had been mated with' a good-conditioned, vigorous, pure-bred bull of a good milking strain? Their calves, then, would represent a distinct improvement from every point of view, thanks to their sire, and if the heifers, when they in turn come into use for breeding purposc-s, be again putto a good bull of the same breed as their sire, they would have some pretentions to respectability from a breeding point of view. It is obvious that by thus always breeding from suitable-pure blood on the male side a rapid improvement in the quality of the stock must take place, and seeing" that each year's crop of calves from a dairy herd muust necessarily be influenced by the character of their sire, either in the 'direction of improvement or deterioration, it is a matter for surprise and regret that so many useless brutes of bulls should be found doing service in the dairying districts of the Dominion. In horse-breeding also there is room for great improvement in prevailing methods. True, apart from trotting sires, the stallions travelling the various districts are mostly more or less purebred, but in many cases the less said about their constitutions. conformation, and, soundness the better. It should not be considered sufficient by a farmer who wishes to put a mare to, say a Clydesdale horse, that the horse selected has a Clvdeslale pedigree. He should get the lx*t horse of the breed that is available, even though his fee be higher. , An extra

guinea or two expended in securing a service from the best horse of his class in the district is one of the very best investments that the horse-breeding farmer can make, not- only as regards the immediate ■progeny of his* mares, but also in that he. is doing his share of good work in raising' the standard of quality of horse-flesh generally. By the way, in this matter of horse-breeding by farmers these is at the present, time, in some dairying district:-? particularly, a tendency to-eliminate too much of the thoroughbred blood and introduce too much of the draught in the crossbred horses used for spring cart and milk-waggon work, the result being that animals of this class are beginning to exhibit a tendency to too much weight, and a corresponding loss of pace and freedom of action.

In sheep-breeding farmers are perhaps less open to criticism as regards the purity of breed in their rams. A purebred* ram, qquite good enough for practical purposes, does not involve a large outlay in his purchase,, and mbst intelligent "sheep farmers make no'mistake in this respect. But it is easy to fall into error as regards the constitutional and the wool-producoing powers of the animal, and by using a ram lacking in either or both of these respects a very appreciable loss may result both by the production of weakly lambs, likely to succumb to unfavourable influences during their ■first winter, and by impairing the quality of their wool product. Wool is an article of such value now-a-days that the influence of the sire upon the yield of his progeny should never be lost sight of.

It- is sincerely to be hoped that in the near future a marked improvement in the methods of breeding adopted by farmers will be noticeable, and that the quality of stock generally will exhibit a corresponding advance. There can be no doubt that the best way in which this can be .brought about is by the use of purebred sires, intelligently selected. Then, though the old leaven of mongrelism will necessarily crop out here and there as a legacy from the mixed blood-of the dam, each succeeding generation must show a big step ahead in the direction of improvement. ; • NEW SHEEP DISEASE. THE MAGGOT FLY IN THE 'DOMINION.

The most disquieting information conveyed to stock owners in the annual report of the department (says the "New Zealand Times") is to be found in the veterinary section. It is the statement by the Chief Veterinarian that the. maggotfly of sheep has found its way into the Dominion. It will' be reiriembered that at. the Agricultural Societies' Conference about four years ago some delegates declared that this pest was in the country, but the chief veterinary officers and the Biologist scouted the idea. They considered the ordinary blow-fly —which will occasionally attack sheep—had been mistaken for the more dangerous -specks. It is hardly necessary to point out that the need for alarm in this country is very much greater than in England. Hermit may be. weeks before' an affected sheep may be noticed by the shepherd, and then it f will probably be too late to "apply treatment with any hope of successful result. Oh the other* hand, in Britain, where sheep are more or less always under' the eye of a shepherd, an animal is as soon as struck, thus enabling treatment to be applied with a certainty of success. The trouble was probably introduced with sheep imported from Australia. It was discovered by an (Hago stock inspector, Mr Hill, of Palmerston South, who sent soriie larvae of the fly, taken from a hogget, to the Chief Veterinarian. On examination these were found to agree in e"ery .respect'.'with the larvae of the British .maggot-fly, and subsequently the true fly wis hatched out." This conclusion was confirmed by the Government Biologist. The fly, lucilia-sericata, is small and of a greenish-blue tint. The: epistoma and face are white; the first ring of the abdomen alone is black. The. matter is of such moment to the sheep, owner of the Doriiinion that we reprint Mr Gilruth's observations:

"This fly is the cause of considerable trouble in Great Britain, and unless care is taken by sheepowners may become an equal nuisance here. A coloured drawing of the fly is in course of preparation for publication, in order that it may be identified if it should appear, and prompt steps be taken to prevent its spread. The larvae of the fly are found chiefly on young animals, especially if they be suffering from diarrhoea. Full-grown sheep are less often seriously troubled. One great point in' combating the bad effects which sometimes accrue is to keep the sheep, especially lambs and hoggets, in as cleanly a condition as possible, particularly about the hind parts, as it is there that the larvae of the fly are usually deposited. If proper care be exercised the presence of the fly is not- likely to cause any serious less to sheepowners in this colony.- If, however, young animals already suffering from diarrhoea are attacked, the result is that- their trouble is accentuated, and rapidly j .progressing wasting eiriaciation followed by death may occur. In view, however, of the fact-that imported pests often become more destructive here than in no effort should be spared in the direction of combating the invasion of this parasite by the maintenance of cleanliness in sheep, particularly young animals by dipping, crutching, dagging, etc., by careful search for the larvae, whenever their presence is suspected, and by their complete destruction when discovered. Whenever scouring is present, all faecesclogged wool should be removed, the cause of the'scouring discovered, and preventive and curative measures adopted. If a wound of any kind is noticed a dressing of tar or of strong carbolic oil should be applied. Where the fly has "struck" the wool should be clipped away, the maggots removed and destroyed, and a strong antiseptic dressing applied to the part. Affected sheep become uneasy, attempting to bite the part and to rub it against posts, etc. Later they become dull and listless, separate from the rest of the mob, and gradually become emaciated and weak until death supervenes. The fly deposits its ova in the wool, the larvae, after hatching, make their way to the skin} which they are able to penetrate in .a comparatively short time. Curative ♦measures, properly and promptly applied, are usually effective, but it is necessary that they be adopted before emaciation and progressive weakness have become established, and if diarrhoea be present steps must be taken to stop it."