BLACK BARLEY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19682, 27 December 1933, Page 2

BLACK BARLEY

FOR GREEN FEED. Skinless black barley is becoming increasingly popular in Hawke's Bay. One farmer in Central Hawke's Bay sowed five acres of oats and four acres of barley in the one paddock. The oats were sown a week before the barley, but the barley was twice the height of the oats in a few weeks. Such an instance as this goes to prove that barley is the crop for the farmer who is short of feed and wants a quick-growing crop to ease the position, or, through the inclemency of the weather, has become late with his seasonal sowing. For feeding purposes black barley sown at the rate of one bushel an acre with grass in the autumn will last all through the winter and provide twice as much feed as oats. Barley is not as sappy as oats, and sheep do not scour as much as they do if put on a crop of young oats. A northern writer gives an instance of a paddock sown one half in oats and the other half in barley as an experiment to see which the lambs would eat first.

The lambs were given the run of the whole field, and the result was that they ate the barley down to the ground before touching the oats, and fattened quickly on it, indicating the superiority of barley as compared with the oats.