AGRICULTURAL NEWS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 2502, 6 September 1890, Page 7

AGRICULTURAL NEWS.

Good silage, properly fed, ie, tays Professor Curtis, nourishing, relishaMe, and produce® good results. The milk from it is sweet and rich, and it improves the churning quality of the cream, while it does not injure if it does not actually improve the quality of the milk. It may also be justly claimed to increase the production of both milk and butter. But the best of silage may be fed to excess, and thus become injurious, 'this is specially true of silage made from green maize, wnich is highly carbonaceous and a one-sided and imperfect ration of itself. It will soon surfeit the cow kept exclusively on it, but she may be starved into eating it. An a consequence, it will be eaten to excess with great avidity, because of the starved condition of the cow’s system, which will crave the nitrogenous elements, and these can be obtained to any satisfactory extent only by eating an excessive amount. The surplus carbonaceous elements will cloy the system and go to wafcte in the manure, while the c©w, if she can get it, will fill herself to a distressing extent with the silage. This creates a feverish condition unfavourable to the production of perfect or wholesome milk, apart from any effect which the quality of the food may have on the milk product ; 501 b. and 601 b., and even 401 b. of silage a day fed to a cow is too large a quantity, aaid it is wasteful to feed it to this amount. Feeders, after so much discussion of the feeding question, ought to know that maize in any form affords a very unbalanced ration, and so excrcjse a little common sods© by supplementing it With good clover, bay, and grain, or something else tliat is correspondingly nitrogenous. There is all the more necessity for doing this if the silage is poor. Silage, particularly tliat made from green maize, needs to be fed with tion.

Tho more fruits we have to market and the nearer our orchards or fruit farms are together, the better it wall be for th® individual grower. Associated effort, is the working power in all well settled communities. It develops a mercantile spirit and enterprise in which good work, honest effort and patient observation bring out the ruling spirit and demonstrates to all others where and how they may follow to advantage. Take a dozen men anywhere and one will lead : all the others do well to follow. From the latest agricultural returns published in the English papers we learn that during the four months ended April 30, of thi® year, Great Britain imported live animals for food to the value of £2,679,994, as against £2,304,658 la6t year. There were 124,970 oxen or bulls, against 90,080 ; 22,213 cows, 22,162 calves, 34,383 sheep and lambs, against 219,841 last year. Of the oxen imported, as many a® 100,010 came from the United States, against 64,743 last year, and 42,585 in 1888. Of grain the value of the imports was £13,004,766, against £15,560,993 last year ; dead meat, £7,042,776, against £6,110,413 ; butter, £3,738,787, against £3,651,927 ; margarine, £1,122,973, against £1,309,405 : cheese. £909,778, against £777,638 ; eggs, £1,048,276, against £971,074.

According to the Stockbridge formulas 100 bushels of potatoes take from the soil 211 b. of nitrogen, 341 b. of potash and 111 b. of phosphoric acid. Is it reasonable to suppose that you can always draw upon the coil at this rate without putting anything hack ? It would seem to be almost useless to urgo the importance of making manure during tho summer season, when we know how little tho average farmer thinks of the subject at anytime. It is to be hoped, however, that bef ore our soil becomes so exhausted of fertility that large sums must be paid for commercial fertilisers to put on the land to enable it to produce paying crops, our fanners will see that it will be much wiser to conserve the fertility by saving and returning to the soil as much of that which is produced from it as cannot b * disposed of in a better market. By taking a little pain® there could be made, on the average farm, during the season, a good lot of manure. We question if there are 100 farmers in Victoria, not including market gardiners, who have comport heaps, and yet there should be one on every farm. By selecting a convenient spot and conveying thereto the manure from the horse stable, and all the refuse organia matter that may be gathered up around tho premises, there can be made during the summer a pile compost that will be worth a good deposit in a bank. The fermentation induced by tho horse manure will cause the contents of tho heap to decay rapidly, even such substances a® bones, old boots, aud other scraps, which too often are seen lying about back doers of fana houses. If decomposed, these things make rich food for plants. If one of the farm animal die®, and the carcase is put into the compost heap, the loss on it is far from being complete. Not only does a compost Leap pav well in the amount of fertilising material made thereby, but when everything about the plaoe that is of no use otherwise, and will delay, i® gathered up aud mode into compost, the premises must necessarily look more tidy than they would if this was not done.