HAMPSHIRE COUNTY 



FARMERS' MONTHLY 



Vol. VIII. 



NORTHAMPTON, MASS., APRHv, 1923 



No. 4 



FROM CAR TO FIELD 



Careless Handling Causes Loss in 

 Seed Potatoes 



Eveiy year too many good potatoes 

 are all but ruined by careless handling 

 after they are received here. A too com- 

 mon practice is to bring the potatoes 

 home, unload them in the most conveni- 

 ent place and then forget them until 

 planting time. The result is a loss of 

 vitality in the seed through chilling or 

 by sprouting. A few hours spent in 

 properly caring for seed when it is re- 

 ceived would save many disappointments 

 later. 



Why and How to Disinfect 



Every farmer knows that if scabby 

 potatoes are planted, the resulting crop 

 will also be scabby unless the seed is 

 disinfected. Mo.st farmers have noticed 

 small black specks on the tubers without 

 realizing just how much harm they can 

 do. These specks are the starting point 

 of Rhizoctonia or "Little Potato Disease." 

 When infected seed is planted the fungus 

 attacks the sprouts and eats them off 

 causing several weaker sprouts to be sent 

 out in place of one or two strong ones. 

 In severe cases, all sprouts are eaten off 

 and an uneven stand results. 



Fortunately both Scab and Rhizoctonia 

 can be killed on the seed by disinfecting 

 with Bi-chloride of Mercury (corrosive 

 sublimate). Disinfection should take 

 place as soon as the seed is received, 

 as it will set the sprouts back several 

 days. The only equipment needed for 

 this work is a few clean, water-tight 

 barrels and two wooden pails. By hav- 

 ing holes bored in the barrels near the 

 bottom and fitted with plugs, the liquid 

 may easily be drawn off. The bi-chloride 

 corrodes metals, thereby weakening the 

 solution, so only wooden vessels should 

 be used. It helps materially to have a 

 platform built so that the water can be 

 drawn off into the pails. 



The materials needed are Bi-chloride 

 of Mercury, which can be obtained from 

 druggists in powdered form, and water. 

 It is well to have the druggist put the 

 bi-chloride up in two-ounce packages, al- 

 though this is not necessary if one has 

 the time and the scales to weigh it up 

 at home. (One ounce should be pur- 

 chased for eveiy barrel of seed to be 

 Continued on page IX. coUimn 2 



TOBACCO GROWERS ATTEND 

 STEER FEEDING MEETING 

 IN HARTFORD 



A good delegation of tobacco growers 

 from this county attended a meeting in 

 Hartford in March to hear County Agent 

 F. S. Eucher of Scranton County, Pa., 

 di.scuss how livestock, both steers and 

 dairy cows, were combined with tobacco 

 in that county. 



The main points made by Mr. Bucher 

 were about as follows : Lancaster County 

 farmers follow livestock and cash crop 

 farming because the system has been 

 handed down to them and has been proven 

 successful. From 40 to 6-5 thousand 

 steers are fattened each year in the coun- 

 ty and in addition 70 to 80 thousand 

 dairy cows are kept. Farmers feeding 

 steers seldom keep much dairy stock. 

 All steers are bought, not raised, and 

 are fattened through the winter. The 

 most successful feeding system is ripe 

 silage, clover hay, cottenseed meal and 

 some corn and cob meal. 



Mr. Bucher pointed out very cleai'ly 

 that the margin of profit in feeding steers 

 was very small. Part of a man's chance 

 of profit or loss lay in his ability to buy 

 the steers and to sell them after feeding. 

 Lancaster farmers do not feed steers 

 with hope of big profits. They consider 

 this method a desirable means of market- 

 ing their farm-grown crops and utilizing 

 their wheat straw for bedding. Live- 

 stock and crop rotation are more than 

 maintaining the soil fertility on most 

 farms. 



Should We Feed Steers? 



Reports received from those attending 

 this meeting show that they are seriously 

 considering benefits which might be ob- 

 tained by carrying on feeding of steers. 

 The general feeling seems to be that to- 

 bacco growers only wish to milk enough 

 cows to supply their own needs. While 

 they realize that the profits if any will 

 be small as regards the steers, they feel 

 that some manure on the lighter land 

 would not only increase the yield of to- 

 bacco per acre but would also raise the 

 quality of the product. 



There are a few men in the county 

 who are feeding steers on a small scale. 



('onlinufd on page Ti, column 3 



A THOUGHT OR TWO 



ON ENSILAGE CORN 



Timely Advice by Prof. John B. Abbott 



What does it cost you to feed a cow 

 a year? How much for concentrates? 

 How much for roughage? Who gets the 

 pay for producing the concentrates? 

 And for handling the concentrates several, 

 times? And for transporting the con- 

 centrates? You do not. That is certain. 



Who gets the pay for producing the 

 roughage? You do, of course, a large 

 part of it. 



That being the case, would it not ap- 

 pear to be good business to feed your 

 cows the maximum practicable amount 

 of roughage and the minimum practicable 

 amount of concentrates? Is it not to 

 your interest to pay yourself for pro- 

 ducing the necessary nutrients instead 

 of paying .someone else for doing it and 

 then adding to that several commi.ssions 

 and transportation charges? If not, 

 what do you own land for anyway? 



And yet, some men do not figure it 

 that way. I know one man who kept 

 cost accounts with an aci-e of silage corn 

 and said it took $20 worth of manure 

 and $40 worth of labor to grow the ci'op, 

 .so he could not afford to grow it. Ap- 

 parently he hated to pay himself such 

 a big price for manure and so much 

 wages for his time. Maybe he was right, 

 though I think the manure, at least, was 

 worth the price. 



Good silage, with corn in it, will go 

 a long way toward supplying the average 

 cow with carbohydrates. Fraser of Ill- 

 inois proved that when he carried a dairy 

 herd for six years on roughage, mainly 

 silage and alfalfa hay, with no concen- 

 trate other than a little corn meal made 

 from ear corn husked from the silage 

 corn. His cows didn't do so badly either. 

 Some of them made over 10,000 pounds 

 of milk in a year and what is of more 

 interest he produced -3,888 pounds of 

 milk per year per acre of land. That 

 compares favorably, very favorably I 

 believe, with the production of milk per 

 acre of land here, including all the con- 

 centrates which are used. 



The alfalfa which he grew, of course, 



e,\plains how Fraser got along without 



buying cottonseed meal or other protein 



concentrates but it does not explain how 



("ontinufd on page II, column 1 



