Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 February 1879 — FARM NOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM NOTES.

A while ago, a hired man was smoking a pipe while standing near the door of the stable. The door was suddenly blown back, knocking the pipe out of his mouth and scattering the fire in every direction. The sparks were put out—but we were reminded that pipesmoking, even by the most careful men, ought never to be tolerated about the barn— Rural New Yorker. Chicken Cholera.—lt was very bad here last spring, and I will tell your readers how we cured it For every forty fowls we took a piece of assafeetida the size of a hickory-nut, broke it in small pieces and mixed it in about a pint of corn meal, wet it thoroughly with boiling water, and placed it near the roosting place, so that the chickens could eat of it the first thing in the morning. If they were not too near dead to eat, a cure was certain.— Letter to Ohio Farmer. ■ Saddle-Galls.—To prevent saddlegalls the saddle should be lined with some smooth, hard substance. Flannel or woolen cloth is bad. A hard-finished, smooth rawhide lining, similar to those of the military saddles, is preferable. Then, if the saddle is properly fitted to the horse’s back, there will be no galls unless the horse is very hardly used. Galls should be washed with soap and wat.-r, and then with a solution of three grains of copperas or blue vitriol to one table-spoonful of water, which will harden the surface and help to restore the growth of the skin. White hairs growing upon galled spots cannot be prevented. — Nebraska Farmer. Few of us are sufficiently aware of the true value of our insectivorous birds. From early spring until late autumn these restless visitors haunt the fields and gardens in quest of food, prying into every nook and crevice where the destroyers of our crops lie concealed, a countless host of which falls a prey to their busy search during the seasons of planting and harvest. Every bird that frequents a farm—if we except the hen-hawk and crow—comes to offer us an unpaid service whose importance we can hardly overestimate. Let anyone, who doubts this watch a phoebebird or a sparrow for half an hour, and see how, with scarcely a moment’s intermission, our little insect-hunter pursues his eager task; and then let him reflect upon the necessity, the duty, of afford ing the birds every possible protection. —Exchange. Feed for Chicks.—Fill a bin with com meal, oat meal and middlings, each fifty pounds, and bran ten pounds; add and thoroughly incorporate with the lot three ounces bone meal and one ounce best Cayenne pepper. Put a pan of thick milk on the stove till the whey is formed and it is scalding hot; add meal to make a stiff batter, salt a little, and bake in a slow oven four hours. If in setting nests you find clear eggs, add two or three of them to the mixture before baking. If you can afford it, add eggs any way. This cake, wet with either milk or water, or crumbled dry, is the most economical feed that can be given—economical not for price, but because it gives the birds growth material in perfection and in a shape that permits waste from neither loss nor fomentation. Enough can be made at once to last a week. If sour milk is not obtainable, make a soup of a few scraps of meat boiled to rags; add potato parings, then add meal and bake as before. Western Rural. Fertility of Dairy Farms.—Much nonsense is circulated in regard to the rapid loss of fertility of dairy farms, by reason of the carrying away of the phosphates in the milk. Now 1,000 pounds of milk contain about three to four pounds of phosphates, of whioh nearly the whole is phosphate of lime. Of this less than half is phosphoric acid. Five thousand pounds of milk, therefore, contain but seven and onehalf pounds of phosphoric acid, which may be taken as the yearly consumption, in this way, of each cow. As : ■wheat bran contains 2.9 per centum of phosphoric acid, it needs only that about 250 pounds of bran be fed to each cow, yearly, to replace the draught upon the soil. There are few dairy cows that are fed less than this quantity of either bran or some fbod equivalent to it, and it is pretty certain that very little, if any, phosphoric acid is really taken from the soil of dairy farms. On the contrary, to say nothing of the natural supply in the soil, which slowly becomes soluble, t here is good reason to believe, > that every well-kept dairy farm becomes gradually richer in phosphates every year.— American Agriculturist.