^1^^.2,1920.] Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W. 561 



answer), (c) It is far ahead of any kind of hay or forage, and mixed with 

 meal or bran nothing can beat it. (d) It is a good milk and butter producer, 

 (e) A very good feed when you liave no roughage. (/) It does not pay to buy 

 pear unless hay is scarce and dear. When sorghum hay is only $7"50 per ton, 

 as it is now, hay is cheaper than pear at 25 cents per load when you have to 

 haul and burn it. 



10. After a crop of pear has been cut, how many years will it take for 

 another crop to grow on the same land? 



Answers. — {a) About two ; but this will depend a good deal on the season. 

 Pear burners are discarded by some, for the reason that they destroy the plant. 

 (h) The pear begins to grow the following year, (c) Three years, (rf) It takes 

 from three to five years to make good-sized pear, (e) 1 do no know, but 

 think about two years. (/) About two years. 



It is very difficult to formulate a definite opinion regarding the effect of 

 pear upon the quality of milk. There appears, however, to be a very well- 

 established opinion that it produces blue milk if not fed with concentrated 

 feeds. There seems to be a great diversity of opinions regarding the flavour 

 of milk from pear-fed cows. Many maintain stoutly that it produces a 

 slightly bitter taste, which is less noticeable when a good ration of corn (maize) 

 or cotton-seed meal is added, while others defy tests that will detect in any 

 'way pear milk from any other except by its poorer quality in cases where 

 the amount of pear fed is large and the entire ration is of low nutritive value. 

 Personally the writer has been unable to verify any of these opinions. 



Til the New Mexico Bulletin No. TS (1911), which is a very valuable 

 bulletin on prickly pear, at p. 19 we have statements as to its value for 

 milch cows, although it is stated tliat they have much more experience in 

 Texas. Following are two of them : — 



Another use of cacti, which is of particular importance in New Mexico, is as 

 a part of the ration for milch cows, especially for dairy stock. No very satis- 

 factory pasture grass for this purpose has yet been discovered in our State, 

 and tile result is that most milch cows are fed on diy feed the year around, 

 and many of them never go out of the corral. For such stock a cactus patch 

 offers a much needed succulent feed and equally needed exercise in gathering 

 it. Dairymen in Texas have been using such cactus pastures with excellent 

 results for a number of years. The cactus is to be fed as part of the ration 

 only, and part of it should be fed chopped and mixed with the grain feed at 

 the regular feeding time. 



There is probably not a farm or a dairy in this State on which a small area 

 of land could not be profitably used as a cactus patch for the milch cows. If 

 this were properly chosen it need not be valuable land, since the cacti will grow 

 on land too rough for ordinary farming operations. 



Once more we wish to emphasise the fact that the great value of this plant 

 as a source of succulent feed, as well as for roughage, lies in its ability to take 

 up water whenever it can get it, and utilise nearly all of it for making forage. 



Experience has shown that cattle prefer the older joints to the young, 

 leathery ones; that they will eat frozen ones; that they learn to enjoy the 

 feed ; that the spines of chopped cactus bother them very little when fed with 

 other roughage; that after they learn to eat The cactus they will work on the 

 spiny unsinged plants, thus demonstrating that the spines bother them very 

 little. Another advantage of this feed as a succulent portion of a ration is 

 that it is at its very best for feeding purposes in the winter time, when other 

 succulent feed is scarce or entirely lacking. 



Under the heading " Prickly pear for Dairy Cows," Mr. E. W. Morse, of 

 the Department of Agriculture, Queensland, in a letter to the Breeder's 

 Gazette, copied in the Victorian Journal of Agriculture for February, 1915, 

 p. 103, quotes the favourable experience of the United States Department 

 of Agriculture (Dairy Division) in regard to the use of the pear in Texas. 



A Pear-eating Cow. — Some years ago an English gentleman, who had 

 lived forty years in Southern Italy, called upon me and we examined the 



