52 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



very small cost. It is doubtless protected from 

 freezing to deatli in -winter by a covering of snow. 

 At Newport, R. I., great pains have been taken to 

 grow privet hedges, but the frosts of winter have 

 invariably proved fatal to them. 



Cooking Food for Animals. — In France, horses 

 are in some locations fed on baked loaves of coarse 

 bread, at a saving, it is said, of half the meal. In 

 Kentncky, S. H. Clay, of Bourbon county, ascer- 

 tained, by very careful experiments, that poi-k made 

 by feeding raw corn at fifty-six cents per bushel, 

 cost nine cents per pound ; fed on boiled corn, it 

 cost four cents per pound ; and on cooked Indian 

 meal, three cents per pound, 



,^IIE LARGEST HoG OF HIS AgE. — GeO. R. BaB- 



BrTT,,of this town, killed a hog this week, sixteen 

 months old, that weighed 740 pounds alive, and 642 

 pounds when dressed. When seven months old, it 

 weighed but 200 pounds, gaining 540 pounds since 

 1st of April. It was fed on raw Indian meal and 

 house swill, including sour milk, and had the run 

 of the barn-yard, with all the new corn meal it 

 would eat since 1st October. Mr. Babbitt is one 

 of those farmers who buy lean cattle and store 

 sheep, and sell them fat, as the means of enriching 

 their land, while it puts money in their pockets. 



DlMISTITIOX IN THE GrOWTH OF POTATOES. Fl'Om 



Chautauque to Oneida county, in this State, the 

 potato yield, even when free from rot, is not one- 

 fourth as large as it was formerly. A farmer from 

 Ckautauque says he used to get a peck from a hill ; 

 now it takes six hills to the peck. Many farmers 

 in this region make the same statement, although 

 more ]>ains are taken to make the crop now than 

 formerly. Per contra, in Ohio and Northern Indi- 

 ana, the yield was never larger, although they are 

 somewhat troubled with the rot where stable ma- 

 nure is applied as a fertilizer. Joseph Mosher, of 

 Mt. Gilead, Morrow Co., Ohio, writes to the Ohio 

 Cultivator that his neighbor planted two Mexican 

 potatoes last spring, which yielded a bushel. ' That 

 same variety of potatoes here, on the best soils, 

 does not yield fifty bushels to the acre. 

 Waterloo, N. Y., JarCy 8, 185S. 



Variety of Farm Products. — A celebrated 

 French agriculturist, Gasparin, speaking of the 

 advantages of cultivating a variety of farm pro- 

 ducts, eloquently says : " We will write upon our 

 flag. Variety ! That 's my device. That rapid 

 locomotion which explores the world, which inter- 

 rogates all climates — that spirit of investigation 

 which is the characteristic of onr age — all will 

 concur in c(mcentrating upon our old soil the young 

 productions snatched from rich countries, and which 

 we shall find means to naturalize. The most hum- 

 ble table shall be covered Avith new gifts : like that 

 of the rich, it shall enjoy a diversity of food, which 

 is the pledge of health, strength, and contentment. 

 Uniformity, whatever may be the scale that we 

 assign to it, is the worst of conditions : it is the 

 spleen of the North ; it is the misery of Ireland ; it 

 is the rule and the chastisement of convents, the 

 homesickness of the barracks." 



Cure for Cholio in Horses. — Take one pint of 

 pure fish brine, and drench the horse with it, and 

 in a short time he wUl be better. J. 0. Cukry. — 

 Wells County^ Ind. * 



SHEEP Ain) SHEEP-TICKS. 



Editors Genesee Farmer: — Whenever I read 

 articles telling how to destroy ticks on sheep, (see 

 Genesee Farmer for January, 1858, p. 13,) ''it kinder 

 raises my dander," as Sam Slick would say. For 

 some thirty years, I have been using a preventive 

 worth a thousand cures, because neither sheep nor 

 anything else of animal kind can be kept profitably 

 without the use of my pi-eventive for ticks, which 

 is simply to feed sheep and all other animals so as 

 to keep them improving and growing all the year 

 round; and if a farmer is paid for keeping stock in 

 any other manner, it is only by chance. If farmers 

 will feed from eight to twelve ounces of grain a day, 

 to each sheep, through the winter and spring, with, 

 good straw for fodder until about the 1st of March, 

 and then give them hay until there is grass enough 

 for them, and give them shelter in the yard during 

 winter, I will guarantee that they will be fi'ee fi'om 

 ticks in the spring, or nearly so, unless there are 

 some so very old that they can not be kept in con- 

 dition, or some diseased ones. But sheep with lung 

 or liver diseases seldom or I think never propagate 

 ticks ; it is healthy sheep, suddenly reduced in flesh 

 by poor feed or other privations — such as exposure 

 to great cold, or wet, dirty yards, where they be- 

 come exhausted by standing and leaning against the 

 fence, for neither sheep nor cattle will lie down in 

 wet dirt so long as they are able to stand up — that 

 are infested with ticks. 



I know there are farmers who say that feeding 

 such lots of corn and oU-cake as I do may pay me, 

 but would not pay them. But their reasoning is 

 absurd; and they would be convinced if they couJd 

 only be persuaded to try, if it were only ten or 

 twenty good sheep, or even lambs in good condi- 

 tion. As soon as pasture fails, commence giving 

 them a little grain — oats are best to learn them to 

 eat — and gradually increase their feed until you. 

 give them each eight to sixteen ounces of grain 

 or oil-cake meal per day (I prefer the latter) ; and 

 I wiU warrant that they will pay amply for their 

 feed ; and the longer they are kept, the better they 

 will pay. They will almost if not quite pay in 

 excess of wool; they will again almost pay in excess 

 of mutton ; and if they are ewes with lamb, they 

 will nearly pay in excess of lambs raised ; and if 

 the lambs are for the butcher, their exti-a quality 

 will again pay for the mother's grain or oil-meal 

 during the preceding winter and spring; and if 

 they are young sheep for feeding another winter, 

 with fair pasture they will be very fat in the fall, 

 and a half-bushel of grain will do more in putting 

 on fat than a bushel would the first winter. 



No man knows what advantage it is to feed both 

 cattle and sheep even a little grain or oil-cake but 

 he who has tried it. The winter before they are 

 intended for the butcher, they fat a half better than 

 the first winter. For instance : I bought a lot of 

 lean lambs and yearlings in the last of November, 

 18.56 — the lambs averaging 55 lbs., the yearlings 

 76 lbs. They were all thin in flesh, but of a pretty 

 large breed. I commenced feeding them oil-meal 

 at once, with good oat and barley straw, and in- 

 creased their oU-meal to 12 ounces each per day, at 

 which rate I continued until grass carae. I fed no 

 hay. (Lambs do not require so much as old sheep; 

 I usually feed a pound each with straw to older 

 sheep, or half a pound with good hay.) They were 



