SHEEP VERSUS GRAIN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3158, 20 September 1892, Page 3

SHEEP VERSUS GRAIN.

A Wanganut correspondent in a contemporary writes:—"So far as I can learn very little gram will be sown this yoar in this district, as tlio fanners say it is too risky on account of the liability of •1 wet harvest, of which, in the last twenty years, we have had full}' a dozen. With fat wethers worth 15s a head, and woolly lambs 9s Gd, sheep pay better than grain, one year with another, and are far less trouble. A man with 500 acres of good grass laud, well sub-divided, and securely fenced, capable of carrying a couple of thousand slieep, has no necessity to go in for any cropping, other than for winter feed. But there can be no question that it would pay to adoft a system of mixed farming, and keep a hundred acres of such a farm tinder tillage. A great deal of laud has boeu exhausted by continued strain cropping, and no return in the shape of manure. This land will now neither pay to crop nor carry a sheep to the acre, and requires a Ions? rest and plenty of manure. That it. will never regain its pristim fertility goes without saving ; but judicious treatment would, in a few years, make it capable of carrying thrice as many sheep as it would now support, for fatten thein it will not. An exhausted farm is about, the worst property anyone could be cursed with."