Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1880 — FARM ROTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM ROTES.

Ashes saturated with keiosene and applied to cucumber and squash plants in the hill will be a great help in keeping off striped bugs. Hay is worth SIOO per ton in some of the mining districts of Colorado. It costs more to feed a horse than it does a man in some of the towns among the mountains. Salt and ashes mixed in the drink of hogs has a great tendency to ward off disease. A solution of copperas also is often useful to purge them from worms. A writer in the Garden suys that if potting soil is placed for a day or two in the hen-yard every particle of it is dug over, and all grubs and eggs of insects are picked out. Prof. Shelton, of the Kansas Agricultural College, favors September calves, because, dropped in that month, they escape the trying heats of summer, can be pushed during the winter with grain, and in spring are ready for grass as soon as it appears. If there is not sufficient rain to keep compost heaps moist water should be snpplied, even if it has to be hauled and poured on them. Decomposition is arrested when the heap becomes dry. A few barrels of water from the well will soon start up heat and decomposition in a dry pile of compost. According to experiments of the Ontario (Canada) School of Agriculture, by adding $5.40 worth of bone dust to farm-yard manure the crop of wheat was increased $7.20 per acre. By adding nitrate of soda the value of the crop was increased $lO. Lucerne is deemed profitable, having a season from April to October. > Where farmers and mechanics intermarry, says J. B. Olcott in the Christian Union, in the old way, as the wiser ones continually do, keeping up an intimacy with the soil and au interchange of employments and implements through the garden, farm and workshop, mutations of fortune find them versatile, and as ready to fall upon their feet with every change of affairs as a cat If you want your chicks to grow fast, feed them on oatmeal scalded with sweet or sour milk. Don’t jnake the feed wet or sloppy, nor give more at once than will be eaten up cleab. Only prepare as much at once as will be all eaten before any fermentation takes place in it. Where oatmeal cannot be had, fine cornmeal or cracked wheat similarly treated and administered will answer a very good purpose. Some people make the mistake of giving the broods hatched by two or more hens at once to a single hen to nurse. If each hen has, hatched but one or two chicks, then, of course, it is right and proper to give them all to one hen. But if each hen has hatched five or six chicks, she should bo allowed to rear them. That number is nearly or quite enough for a small or mediumsized hen at this time of the year.

Fowls will need the best food if an abundance of good rich eggs are desired. Wheat steeped in boiling water, and given hot, and hot baked potatoes crushed with a masher,areas good food as can be given; water slightly warmed with a small quantity of copperas in it will be useful. Allspice mixed with corr.-meal musli is an excellent condiment, and by no means costly. Laudanum in ten-drop doses has been found a remedy for the cholera, or poultry intestinal fever, which has destroyed so many birds. All animals fatten better in mild weather or in comfort ible winter quarters than when exposed to the inclement season. A farmer, desirous of testing this, commenced with a lot of hogs, averaging 175 pounds each, on the 20th of September. He fed them two weeks and then weighed them, and found that at the price ruling in that market his corn so fed brought him GO cents per bushel. He weighed and fed them again two of the coldest weeks in November, and found on again weighing that, with pork at the samo price, his corn had only brought him 30 cents. One fruitful source of colic in horses is cracked coin. If corn is to be fed, use whole corn; it is much more likely to be perfectly masticated than cracked corn, and its imperfect mastication causes the colic. It is also unwise to feed grain to a hungry horse, for theu a large portion is very apt to be swallowed without being properly masticated. This can be seen in their voidings. Always let the edge of a horse’s hunger be taken off with a feed of hay before feeding grain. Half an hour extra spent m feeding, whon on the road, will bring 3ou homo half an hour earlier at night. During the winter housing, poultry is liable to become lousy, and are often seriously affected with scurvy. When in this condition the egg product is greatly diminished. Coal tar is a good material for hen-houses. It i 3 a good disinfectant and deodorizer, and a pretty certain exterminator ot' all vermin from every part which is likely to come in contact with the poultry. The tar should be applied in the boiling state. This will soon dr . On all portions which do not come in contact with the poultry, apply the tar raw; this will be more destructive and last longer. Twice a year is quite sufficient. Kerosene is good, but it soon evaporates, and to be effective must be applied twice a week.