Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1884 — AGRICULTURAL. [ARTICLE]

AGRICULTURAL.

Turnips.—A very cheap food for stock is turnips, sowed before the last hoeing of melons, when the only cost is the pulling, pitting, and feeding of them. I raised an immense crop of red top and white flat Dutch turnips that way this seasop, some of the Dutch reaching the Wonderful size of six pounds each. —Einchan ge. A good food fer laying hens is to use one part ground oats, one part corn meal, and one part fine bran. Mix with boiling water, first adding a little.salt and a tablespoonful of copperas water for every ten hens. Give this in the morning, and at night feed whole corn and wheat. Parching the grains .Once or twice a week is very beneficial. Give a little meat and ground bone, as well as pounded oyster shells, at least three times a week. Carbolic acid is death to all insects, in every stage of A fruit grower in Duchess County, New York, whose quince trees were being destroyed by borers, used a mixture of one gallon of soap, two of water and a gill of carbolic acid. This he applied to his trees with complete success, the millers refusing to deposit their eggs on the frees. On another occasion he applied the mixture, which was washed off by frequent rains, when the pests annoyed him seriously. He thinks repeated applications very effectual, and recommends the mixture so all who have orchards. \ ■— ... ; . In the experiments of Professor Sanborn of the Missouri Agricultural College, he found that; meal-fed steers gained, in sixty-one days, seventy pounds more on 380 pounds less of fodder than steers on whole corn. The cost of grinding was $2.50, value of the extra seventy pounds, $3.50, or a dollar was gained in flesh and 380 pound of fodder saved besides. Wheat straw was fed with the grain in both cases. Professor Sanborn’s statement is a very important one, for he has demonstrated thatnot only can the cost of grinding be repaid by the method, but an actual gain is the result. A correspondent writing to the American Rural Home says:... “Do not let any of your farm implements remain exposed to the weather. When not in use keep them housed by all means. By letting farm machinery stay in the field, exposed to winds, and the hot sun, they receive more injury than from careful usage. I know of a sulky rake that has done the raking on a large, rough farm for eleven years that is as good as new, but is has been taken good care of and housed when notin actual use. Farmer friend. I tell you it pays to take good care of your tools.” Bees work without wages, only requiring a house in which to store their products, and many persons find them a source of very considerable profit. The methods of their proper management are easily acquired, though it is the experience of beekeepers that there is always something new to learn. If commenced in a moderate way, say a couple of swarms, at no very great cost, they will increase quite as rapidly as the knowledge of their manipulation is acquired. A person would be pretty sure of a good deal of experience, and would have reasonable grounds for expecting to realize a fair amount of honey. Bees are clearly entitled to a place on the little farm.— Farmers' Mazazine. Value of Exact Knowledge About Stock.—By placing before the public exact records of the performances of their favorite breeders of Jerseys have done the world a great good, for they set breeders of other stock to thinking that it will pay them,too, to know exactly how much butter, or cheese, or beef, or mutton their Ayrshires, Holsteins, Short-Horn or favorite sheep are capable of making. There has ever been a .“plentiful lack” of such information, yet it is just what the intendent buyer needs to enable him to select with a fair degree of certainty the animal he wants; and the breeder needs such exact data to show him what animals in his herd or flock he should exchange for others. Breeders have seemed to ignore the fact that they have sense other than sight, and. everything hfj.s until lately depended upon eyesight alone except so far as weighing of stock at shows is concerned. Records of beef breeds are filled with,grandilQ,Quent adjectives raked together to describe the “sweet bosoms,” the “lovely twists,” the “magnificent briskets,” and the “supei b backs” of the beasts under the reporter’s notice at the moment; but little of real worth has been given, because such words as have been used, in the effort to describe the animals, have conveyed little if anything more than the idea that the writer had searched the books for new and strong adjectives, with little care as to the'fitness of those selected. A record of prize winnings is of more worth, since it shows that the winner of the first prize was in the opinion of the judges better than any others shown at the same time, and that the second-prize animal was next in merit -to the first. But, after all, that gives little or no information on the important pointer of the gain made in weight during the animal’s life and the peculiar excellencies it possessed. But it is when prizes are awarded at the ikirs to dairy cattle that the worst absurdities are seen, and the need of definite knowledge of the individual merits to secure anything approaching justice is most plainly apparent. Under the prevailing system the best cow in the world may be passed by without notice by the judges, while the highest prize they'can bestow will be given to some animal, good-looking, but almost worthless when compared with her rival for all the purposes of the dairy.— Chicago Tribune.