Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1888 — THE FARM HOME. [ARTICLE]

THE FARM HOME.

SMALL FLOCKS OF SHEEP. It is a wholesome caution to lie moderate, at least,, in beginning with sheep. Small flocks always do best. jSheep are apt to huddle together, and if foot rot or other disease breaks out it •will quickly spread through the entire flock. SOURED MILK AH FEED. Many .people can safely drink sour milk, w hile their stomkehs are too weak to digest that which is still sweet. This is trtie of animals. 7 The calf put upon a diet of slightjy soured milk may scour, but it is usually not from the sourness of the milk, but from its lower temperature,. A pailful or half full of cold, sour liiilk chills the digestive organs, diarrluea is the only way in which the stomach can dispose of its incubus. THINNING APPLES. It is easily possible in seasons of abundant blossoming for one-half the set of fruit to make more bulk of apples than the whole. The codling moth thins, and usually too much, but does not do it the right way. The apples are half or twothirds grown before they drop and fall. The true way is to spray the tree with Paris green to destroy the worm, and then hand pick the fruit before it forms seeds, and thus exhausts the vitality of the. tree.

FEET pF WESTERN HORSES. A horse dealer remarked not long ago that he did not like to deal in Ohio bred horses, because most of them had feet easily lamed. He attributed it to the soft dirt roads on which, out side the cities, the horses of that State mostly travel. Their feet do not become accustomed to hard roads while young. Kentucky is only across the river from Ohio, but it has excellent hard roads on all the chief thoroughfares, and on these its fine trotters get the practice that makes them excel. FRESH EGGS FOR SETTING. When setting eggs from one’s own stock it is better to use those laid the same day, and if put under the setting hen w hile still warm it will be all the better. In early spring eggs are often chilled to their injury, and some of them addled when set, because of this. Placing them in pans or on plates in cold rooms is wrong. If a setting hen is not ready, lay the eggs on a piece of flannel in a moderately warm place, and at night cover them with another piece of flannel. If those who sell eggs for hatching would use this precaution they might have fewer complaints early in the season. WHOLE GRAIN FOR SMALL CHICKENS. Much of the feeding of chickens is of soft food. It is easily picked by the lit—tlefellows, and they can quickly "111!" their crops from a dab of wet meal thrown on the ground before them. This too rapid eating is one of the worst evils in artificial feeding of young chickens. They gorge themselves, become surfeited and die. We have found whole wheat grain much better, beginning for two or three days by breaking the grain in two pieces. It does not matter, however, if the little fellow is forced to do this work himself. He will struggle with a wheat or oat grain two or three minutes, and at last, after a desperate struggle, swallow it. The very hardness of the whole grain keeps his food from compacting in his crop. We w'ould not, however, feed whole corn to very young chicks, nor indeed corn ground into meal asdlieir principal diet. - ;

GRAIN TO COWS AT PASTURE. If a cow is at all fit for the dairy.she will bear good feeding with grain any time after her calf is a week old, and she shows no symptoms of fever or caked bag. Grain is especially needful after she is turned out to pasture. The succulent grass stimulates a large flow of milk, but th£re is little jsdbstance in it. The cow must furnish the fat from herself to make the milk rich enough. A really good cow will not fatten, no matter how highly she is fed dttrihg the first flow of milk, but it may make her yield so largely as to require that her milk be drawn three times in twentyfour hours. This is often done with high feci cows, though it is extremely exhaustive to milk if a cow is poorly fed.

THE STOLEN PUMPKIN CROP. We have pretty steadily maintained that nobody ever gained anything by stealing, even if it was only a crop of pumpkins among his corn. It is a quite common practice, and an Ohio man writes that where he grows the most pumpkins his corn is also the best. This has not been our experience. In the best years for corn the pumpkin crop never amounted to much. But doubtless something depends on methods of cultivation. Our practice hits been to till shallow all through the season. With this the late cultivation is almost always a benefit. But in places where severe droughts abound, and a big plow is run deeply between the rows as the only means of cultivating the crop, it may easily be an advantage to have pumpkins dr something else in the way to keep the plow out of the field. In that case the fields where the pumpkin vines were plentiful-might have the fewest corn-; mots destroyed. scatteriS’g manure is barnyards. We-Bssmne t-he Imlk of -Wrirterrnade manitre in the barnyard lias been drawn out? Butnvheye teams are hurried toward “orTessmanure that can not well Be got on the wagons. This should be scraped into heaps, if possible under shelter.

Left expoped through the summer, scattered over the yard, little of it can b* collected by Fall, and that little will not have much value. If the manure is fine enough, as the scatterings often are, it maybe drawn after Spring plowing is finished, as a top dressing for the meadows.’ The grass will shade it from the sun, and the manure will keep the ground under it moist and rich. None of it will be in the way by the time the grass is cut, as it will be washed down by rains and decayed by contact .with the soil. now DRAIN I N(J WARMS SOIL. It is the loss of heat by evaporation that makes wet soil always cold. This' evaporation goes on faster when the sun shines and warm winds are blowing, and thus neutralizes their warming effects. A man wrapped in woolen thoroughly saturated with water will chill none the less quickly for being placed in sunshine or in a draft of warm air. Many people have lost their lives from not'understanding this fact. A man exposed to rain all day is often less likely to take cold than one who merely gets wet and then dries suddenly by the warmth from his body causing evaporation. This "process of evaporation cools the soil in just the same way, only fortunately the clods are insensible to the cold. But seeds and the plants are not thus insensate, ft makes a great deal of difference to their growth whether water in the soil is evaporating from the surface, or is sinking down through drains followed by currents of warmer spring air.

FROFIT FROM DAIRY COWS. It is a pretty good native cow that will make 500 pounds of butter a year, averaging seven pounds a week for nearly ten months of that time. If the butter can be sold for twenty cents per pound it gives a larger average profit per acre for the land required to keep, the cow than can be got from grain growing at present prices. If three acres are required to feed a cow through the year, this is S2O an acre profit, leaving skim-milk for the pigs and manure from the cow to pay for the labor. But there are ways to greatly increase this profit. With fodder corn as a basis of the ration and the purchase of wheat bran, eormneal and other meals as accessories, a cow may be kept most of the year on a little more than an acre. Better still, by the addition of improved blood the cow may be bred to produce much more of both milk and butter per year. Examine closely the records of milk butter of the. Holstein-Friesian stock, and determine if this be not the true road to success.

NPIU NO SNOWS. When snow falls in the spring, delaying plowing and seeding, it is not an unjnixed evil. Ills popularly called “the poor farmer’s manure?’ The general notion among farmers is that it absorbs considerable amounts of ammonia from the air. Being porous it does probably absorb more than rain, though all the latter must have first passed through the lower air to the clouds as steam or insensible evaporation. A very little ammonia where the roots of plants can get at it has a wonderfully stimulating effect. But the greatest advantage of these spring snows lies in the fact that they fall as a mantle on the sdflj .without* packing it as the same amount of water in drops of rain would do. On ground that has been disturbed this spring a light fall of snow under an April sun melts by noon, and before night the surface seems nearly as dry as before it fell. If a. field has been plowed through several days it should generally be left in the furrow until it is ready for seeding. After dragging down smooth, if either heavy rains or snows come, the soil will be unfit to work for several days.