Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1878 — AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC. [ARTICLE]

AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC.

Around the Farm. Thb Poultry World says, separate the sexes in old chickens this month, while the moulting season lasts. Look for grubs among your peach trees right away; at the surface of the ground, or just below it, yon know. Cur up and mixed with scalded meal, "pusley,” the Poultry World says, is one of the best of green feeds, especially for young chickens. Fowls may be easily caught in daytime by enticing them to thd-poultry-house and making it dark by hanging a blanket over the window. A poultry keeper who lately applied “grease from the frying-pan and sulphur’ to the heads of lousy young chickens, soon found the lice gone—and the chickens dead. A Nebraska farmer reports 600 pounds of bright sugar and 153 gallons of nice sirup from two acres of early sorghum. He got the sugar by hanging the thick sirup in coffee sacks after it began to granulate. The farmer who wishes to avoid an excess of labor, with unprofitable result, will not spread a small quantity of manure over a large surface of poor land, but will only plow as much as he can highly manure, when his income will be as large and his labor nearly onehalf saved. Cultivate thoroughly if you wish to reap abundantly. Do not waste your means and fritter away your time by raising a crop of noxious weeds with your cane or cotton or corn. Keep a watchful eye upon the farm and its surroundings. But it does not follow that you should imbibe “eye-openers” at public houses, beer shops, or comer groceries.

If the farmer improves his farm he improves his financial condition. The more valuable he makes it the more his capital stock is increased, the larger will be his returns, and when he dies the larger will be the patrimony he leaves his family. Fix up the old home, then. Olean out the fence corners. Destroy the noxious weeds. Grab out the hazel and sassafras. Burn out the stumps. Olean off the logs and stones. Make a paradise on earth of your farm, for are you not to live on it while you remain on earth, and will not your family live on it when you lie in yonder graveyard ? Plant out good orchards, so that your family may enjoy the good ■ fruit "that you had the foresight and energy to provide for them.

As a flesh-producer, one pound of eggs is equal to one pound of. beef. A hen may be calculated to consume one bushel of com yearly, and to lay twelve dozen or eighteen pounds of eggs. This is equivalent to saying that three and one-tenth pounds of corn will produce, when fed to a hen, one pound of eggs. A pound of pork, on the contrary, requires about five and one-tenth pounds of com for its production. When eggs are 24 cents a dozen and pork 10 cents a pound, we have a bushel of corn fed, producing $2.88 worth of eggs and $1.05 of pork. Judging from these facts, eggs must be economical in their production and in their eating, and especially fit for the laboring man in replacing meat. As a rule, pure-bred sheep are quite too dear to raise for mutton. The fine wools are small; the long wools furnish too much fat in proportion to lean to be profitable to the consumer. The Southdowns supply fine-grained lean meat, but they have the drawback of being a trifle small. A cross between Southdown rams and merino ewes produces a favorite class of rams for the Eastern markets. They are hardy, mature early and strongly display the excellent Southdown points. If these grades or Southdown ewes are crossed with a Cotswold or Leicester ram the progeny will be large, and the growth rapid, while the flesh will have a choice flavor. To supply early lambs for the butcher this is probably as good a cross as can be made, as there is always a demand for such lambs in New York and other Eastern cities at profitable prices.