PastAire Defciftneifis-. 541 



PASTURE DEFICIENCIES. 



By J. E. Batchelor fTn-sjicrtor of 8tock). 



Relation of the Soil to Stock. 



From time to time reports reach this office of ailments affecting 

 ■our flocks and herds which on being investigated prove to be due to 

 soil wants, in consequence of which the pasture grown upon them is 

 either lacking in certain constituents or they are present in such small 

 quantities as to be almost valueless, the result being that animals 

 constantly grazed on such lands in the course of a few years become 

 run down in constitution. From debilitated parents it is hardly fair 

 to assume that stock being reared under similar conditions will 

 become hardy. It is often stated that in old times we had none of this 

 trouble, and the reason is not far to seek. When our lands were first 

 settled they were decked with feed in some districts perhaps but 

 sparsely, and what little had grown upon the land from time 

 immemorial had not been eaten off, but after ripening had withered 

 off and gone back to the earth again, thus returning to the soil what 

 had been taken from it. With settlement the case was altered, and 

 although the timber was ringed, and the quantity of herbage grown 

 thereby increased and sweetened, all this had been done at the 

 expense of the soil, as nothing had been returned. Agricidturists 

 foimd also that the continual cultivation of land temporarily exhausted 

 it, and even after fallowing, while the crop of straw gave promise of 

 heavy yields, they were disappointed very often in finding the yields 

 so far below their expectations and the grain itself thick in the bran, 

 in milling phraseology "branny." Overtaxing the land had robbed 

 it of its phosphates, in consequence of which the quality and quantity 

 of grain garnered was not up to expectations. This land was then 

 spelled for a time, and more virgin soil broken up. In the meantime 

 stock were allowed to nibble off the weeds and rubbish growing on 

 land already impoverished, under the impression that they might 

 assist in restoring to the soil some of its former vigour, entirely 

 forgetting that the stock could not return to the land more than they 

 received from it. True, on some cultivation paddocks thus laid down 

 a plentiful growth of wild oats, sorrel, wire-weed, and other herbage 

 sprang up, and the animals feeding on such lands were enabled to fill 

 themselves, yet they did not thrive satisfactorily, this more especially 

 so in the case of young cattle or milch cows. While there seemed to 

 the casual observer an abundance of feed on our pastures, the cattle 

 grazing on them in the spring of the year ravenously hunt after bones; 

 this is because of a want in the soil, perhaps due in the first instance 

 to only a scant supply, which has been exhausted either by cultivation 

 or overstocking, or both. Some pastures are but poorly supplied 

 with phosphates, and when the timber growing upon them has been 

 ringed, and the math thickened, and afterwards heavily stocked. 



