Inquiries and Replies. 279 



Nurse Crop for Lucerne in the Karroo. 



Middelburg, Cape. — When should a iiurse crop be used in 

 establishing' lucerne, and what crop is most suitable for this purpose? 



Grootfontein Scho^ol of Agriculture replies : A nurse crop is use- 

 ful when lucerne is sown late, that is, in the winter or spring-, and 

 also on sandy soil, because it tends to protect the young lucerne plants 

 from the heat of early summer and from hot, drying winds. It tends 

 also to bind or to hold loose soil so that it does not wash during irriga- 

 tion. Suitable crops are rye and oats, which should be sown thinly, 

 about 30 lb. per acre. The nurse crop should not be allowed to grow 

 to maturity, and should be harvested when still green. 



Dodder in Lucerne. 



Oudtshoorn. — Kindly inform me as to the best method of eradicat- 

 ing dodder from lucerne. 



Grootfontein School of Agriculture replies : The following- 

 methods will be found effective : (1) Spraying with a saturated solution 

 of common salt. The dodder is killed, but the lucerne is uninjured. 

 (2) Burning. The lucerne in the infected patches is cut close to the 

 g-round. Straw is then piled over the crowns and set on fire. 



In both these methods any dodder seed which has been shed will 

 escape and may germinate, causing reinfection again later on. The 

 eradication process will then have to be repeated. It is important 

 to deal with the pest promptly before ripe seeds have a chance of 

 being formed. 



Milk Records. 



Britstown, Cape. — I have a herd of mixed cattle that give me 

 about twenty gallons of milk per day. It is my wish to improve these 

 cattle by grading up with a pure-bred bull and by keeping milk 

 records to enable me to weed out the worst producers. What I want 

 to know is how to keep milk records. 



Grootfontein School of Agriculture replies : A milk record is 

 obtained by keeping count of the amount of milk and butter-fat 

 produced by each cow during her full lactation period, together with 

 a record of the amount of food consumed by each cow. Such are 

 obtained by weighing the milk produced by each cow daily and testing 

 it for its butter-fat content once weekly, while the food fed is easily 

 obtained by weighing the cow's daily ration and multiplying this 

 amount by seven to give the weekly total. If it entails too much work 

 to weigh each cow's milk daily, a record sufficiently accurate for weed- 

 ing-out purposes can be obtained by weighing the milk once weekly 

 and multiplying this figure by seven to give the week's production. 

 Read Bulletin No. 11, 1913, "The Treatment of Milk and Dairying 

 Stock." 



