Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1880 — FARM NOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM NOTES.

The rain annually pours into the soil a quantity of nitrate of ammonia fully equivalent to three pounds per acre. Damaged com is exceedingly injurious as food for horses, because it brings on inflammation of the bowels and skin diseases. Guinea fowls will keep all bugs and insects of every description off garden vines. They will not scratch like other fowls, or harm the most delicate plants. The average butter yield of the Ayrshire cow is one pound from twenty to twenty-five pounds of milk; from the Jersey it is one pound of butter from eighteen pounds of milk. * Turnips are healthful for horses. They should be cut in slices, or, what is better, pulped finely and mixed with a little meal and some salt. Rutabagas are better than white turnips.' Keeping sheep is pleasant and profitable, if attended to properly. Wool is a sure thing every year and brings cash. It has its ups and downs, but let any man make up his mind that none but his wife or his administrator shall sell his wool for less than 50 cents per pound and he will come out all right.

Parsnips, carrots, Swedish turnips and especially mangel-wurzel, will all fatten pigs. These roots ought not to be given in a raw state, but always cooked and mixed with beans, peas, Indian corn, oats or barley, all of Which must be grouud into meal. When pigs are fed on such cooked food as we have stated, the pork acquires a peculiarly rich flavor, aud is much esteemed, especially for family use. Horse Hints.— Rubber bits are the best for winter use on your horses. The mortality among horses is greater between the ages of 4 and 8 years than at all other periods of life. Warm the bit on your bridle in frosty weather before putting it in the horse’s mouth. The bit full of frost, coming in contact with the tongue and lips, adheres to these soft tissues the same as it would do whiJ'n red-hot, leaving the animal with a sore mouth. If you do not be lieve it place your own tongue on a piece of frosted iron some cold morning and be convinced.

A good workshop containing such tools as can be nsed to advantage by the fafmers should be found on every farm. A room with a stove in it and large enough to permit of the construction of a hay rigging, a gate or portable fence, will furnish a place where many hours may be healthfully aud profitably spent m the most inclement weather of winter. Here a great deal of repairing may be done that would otherwise find its may to the professional mechanic. New tools may be built, that will be needed on the farm, or harnesses may be oiled and repaired aud a great many things that will suggest themselves may be done. In mild weather tho thoughtful can find profitable out-door work, such as repairing outbuildings and cutting up falling branches from trees. —Bural New Yorker.

Large numbers of cattle die annually in the West from the lack of water when feeding in the cornfields. Dry corn-stalks, as compared with grass, are constipating food; but smutty cornstalks are especially liable to cause impaction of food in tho stomach, and disease of the brain. The risk is largely or entirely obviated if tliero is a sufficient supply of water; but when the water is frozen up the animal can no longer chew the cud from lack of water in the paunch to separate and float its contents, and impaction and a whole train of evil consequences follow. If water can bo supplied so that the cattle can drink at will, it is better; but if not, it should be allowed abundantly at any cost twice a day. While in many-cases no other than iced water can be had, it is all-important that stock should not be left to become so thirsty that they will fill themselves when driven to driok, and then stand shivering in the colu stall or stanchions, where they are denied even tho privilege of stimulating their circulation by walking about. —National Live-Stock Journal.