Departmental Activities. 



The Value of Silage. — A droug-lit such as we have experienced 

 this year should be an incentive to farmers to make provision for the 

 lean years by having a good supply of sileage on hand. The wintei- 

 ing- of cattle is always a matter of importance to the stock farniei . 

 The cattle will do much better if, in addition to the veld grazing, 

 they receive some silage. Dairy farmers especially should not alloA\- 

 their cattle to come down much in condition, and this is of special 

 irnportance in the case of young in calf heifers, since their growtli 

 will be stunted considerably. Succulent food such as silage and 

 roots will do much to stimulate milk production in the cold months 

 when the milk flow is dropping considerably. 



Special Course in Poultry Farming.— During the past five or 

 six years there has been u constant and increasing demand for 

 special instruction in poultry farming, but shortage of stafi: and lack 

 of facilities have hitherto made such a special course impossible. 



Many people are now turning their attention to poultry farming 

 as a means of livelihood, and in many cases these people are of 

 mature age, and the two-year diploma course is not to their liking. 

 Moreover, the object in view in the diploma course is to impart such 

 information as will be of value to those keeping poultry, as they are 

 ordinarily run on the farm, viz., as a sideline. The applicants for 

 special instruction in poultry fai-ming require special information 

 to enable them to run poultry as a business, i.e. on commercial lines, 

 and the equipment and method is very dilferent in this case from 

 that of the ordinary farmer. 



The need for a special poultry course is therefore great, and 

 fortunately the obstacles that hitherto stood in the way have now 

 been removed, and it is proposed to commence the first course as 

 advertised on the 24th July. The major part of the instruction will 

 be given by the Lecturer in Poultry and his assistants. Lectures 

 will, however, be given by the officers of the institution in horti- 

 culture and botany, in field crops, in agricultural engineering, and 

 carpentry, in anatomy of the domestic fowl and poultry parasites. 

 in book-keeping, and in feeds and feeding in so far as these pertain 

 to poultry farming. The course is, therefore, complete, and it is 

 anticipated that the applications will exceed the accommodation. 



ELSENBURG. MULDERS VLEI. 



The Avoidance of Codling-moth Infestations. — Codling-moth is 

 a much more serious pest in South Africa than in California. In the 

 latter country by far the greatest majority of pears are of the Williams 

 or Bartlett variety,* an early ripening fruit, which is harvested before 

 a complete second brood of the insect develops, with the result that 

 where the Williams crop is harvested there is in most cases no fruit 

 left in the orchard in which codling may breed, consequently the 

 majority of the moths die without having increased their progeny. 

 This results in a much lighter infestation to start with the following 

 year. But in South Africa, the great majority of fruit growers, if 

 not all, have at least six varieties, the Williams forming at most no 

 more than one-sixth to one-quarter of the crop, the rest mainly com- 

 prising such varieties as Cornice, Kieffer, Louise Bonne, Winter Nelis, 

 and Glou Morceau, all of which do not escape even a third brood of 

 codling larvae. 



