1870. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



121 



and it yielded no crop. Then he put on twenty 

 loads of clay and harrowed it down, trying to pul- 

 verize the chunks. He then sowed grass seed and 

 got at the rate of two tons of hay per acre ; the 

 turf was good and firm so the water did not wash 

 it off. It continued good as long as he lived upon 

 the farm. He spoke of a piece of eight acres of 

 blowing sand, that when first cleared was good 

 grain land, but by being long cropped was ex- 

 hausted. The treatment he would advise would 

 be a dresing of clay. 



I. N. C. considered the hard pan thrown up 

 from ditches, excellent dressing. 



E. P. C. had believed for years that clay was a 

 very valuable fertilizer for grass. It possessed 

 just the qualities necessary to make grass grow. 

 He had seen an instance where the claj' from a 

 well was thrown upon the grass ground near by 

 and caused a rank growth. z. e. j. 



Irasburg, VL, Dec. 22, 1869. 



FOOT KOT IN SHEEP. 



In a recent communication of Doctor Boynton 

 to the Farmer on foot rot in sheep, I notice he 

 recommends treating each toot in a flock of sheep 

 as carefully and with as much precision as you 

 would a sore finger. Now with a flock of a dozen 

 sheep that is all well enough, especially if they 

 are fancy ones. But how is it in docks of one to 

 five hundred ? The "eternal vigilance" would 

 have to be accompanied with a great amount of 

 very disagreeable labor. 



Now I propose to give my experience briefly in 

 this matter of foot rot. In the tir»t place, I went 

 through "the mill" wben I was a boy, and "lived 

 out ;" and learned jOi.ething of the process of 

 doctoring with vitriol in the old fashioned way. 

 In 1846, after commencing for myself in Vermont, 

 I had a flock of about 130 sheep, and they got the 

 foot rot, and got it badly. Well, I went to work 

 and worked two whole days, — I was alone in those 

 days, — on that flock, paring and plastering, and I 

 remember well what a miserable, dirty, back-ach- 

 iog job it was. Well, the sheep got better — a good 

 deal better, — but after awhile they began to grow 

 lame again ; either a relapse of old cases or the 

 coming on of new ; probably both. I thought to 

 myself, this will never do. I can't go that job 

 over again, I must devise some wholesale mode of 

 doctoring. So I went to work and built a small 

 yard in a pan of the pasture nearest the house, in 

 which I put my salt troughs, and when the sheep 

 had got a little salt hungry, called them into the 

 yard, gave them their salt, shut them in and kept 

 them iong enough to be sure they all found the 

 salt. As soon as the sheep had got used to coming 

 into the yard after their salt, I placed a trough 

 six or eight feet long on the ground in the narrow 

 gate way, and fenced it so that the sheep in going 

 into the yard would be obliged to walk the whole 

 length of the trough. The bottom of the trough 

 should be nearly level and wide enough for a sheep 

 to walk in. I put into the trough one or two pails 

 of salt brine, or enough to cover the hoofs, and 

 also a solution of vitriol, and a pound or two of 

 tobacco, steeped. I think I depended as much 

 upon the brine as the vitriol, and I had some faith 

 in the curative qualities of tobacco. At any rate 

 it served to prevent the sheep from licking up the 

 brine. Now the sheep must have their salt, and 

 there was no way to get it but to walk straight 

 through that mixture in the trough. It was fun 

 to see them walk mincingly through it without 

 knowing what it was for. In a short time my 

 sheep were cured, and remained cured while I 

 owned the flock, nearly two years. 



Any flock of sheep I believe may be cured of foot 

 rot in that same way. I never knew a flock of 

 over a hundred that was ever perfectly cured in 



any other way. My neighbors at the time advised 

 me to take out a patent for my discovery ; but I 

 never did. So every sheep raiser has the right to 

 adopt my plan, or the old one of paring and plas- 

 tering by hand. A. G. Notes. 

 Lancaster, N. H., Dec, 1869. 



EXPERIMENT WITH FERTILIZERS. 



In October, 1866, 1 ploughed a pasture ten inches 

 deep. In 1867, planted potatoes on the land with 

 no other fertilizer than 200 pounds of plaster. 

 The soil of this field is a brown loam and uniform 

 as to quality. In the sprinj^of 1868 I staked it olT 

 into three equal parts, containing 146 square rods 

 each. 



On lot No. 1, I used 1769 pounds of Bradley's 

 Superphosphate of Lime. Two bushels of Club 

 Wheat were sown on this lot, prepared by wetting 

 it with brine and drying it with a portion of the 

 superphosphate. The remainder was sown on the 

 land after the wheat had been sown and harrowed 

 once. The plat was again well harrowed and 

 rolled for an even surface for the grass. 



Lot No. 2 was sown and treated the same as No. 

 1, except that it was fertilized with 1441 pounds of 

 Paddock and Dean's Raw Bone. 



Lot No. 3 was treated the same as to drying and 

 sowing as No. 1. But as a fertilizer 1770 pounds 

 of Bradley's Raw Bone was used. 



On harvesting, the result was as follows : — 



Lot 1 produced 29 bnehela, weighing 61 Vbs ^ bushel. 

 Lot 2 " 24 " " 60 " 



Lots " 29J " " 60 " 



By which it appears that the excess of wheat on 

 Nos. 1 and 3 over that on No. 2 was enough to pay 

 for the fertilizers ftsed. d. c. 



Peacham, Vt., Dec. 20, 1869. 



SURPRISE OATS. 



I forward you a sample of surprise oats raised 

 this season from seed that I received from Mr. 

 Van Olinda, of Illinois, in the spring of 1868, but 

 too late to sow that season. The seed sown 

 weighed 4-5 pounds to the bushel, and that raised 

 this season weighs the same, and was ten days 

 earlier and nine pounds heavier than the Norway. 

 I obtained my Norway seed from Mr. Pease of 

 Hartford, Vt., the same year and sowed it that 

 season, raising enough for seed the la?t year. 



What is meant by the term "best oats," as used 

 at the Farmers' Meeting at Manchester. N. H. ? 

 My father entered the Surprise Oats, but the New 

 Brunswick Oats, weighing 41 pounds to the bushel, 

 received the premium. m. 



Jan. 10, 1870. 



Remarks. — The specimen received is certainly 

 j?ery handsome. The kernels are uniformly 

 plump, bright and heavy. We do not know any 

 thing of the principles on which the awards were 

 made by the committee on oats at the Manchester 

 Meeting. 



GROWING BARLEY. 



The high price which this grain has borne for 

 the last two or three years, and its excellent quali- 

 ties as a milk producing food for dairy stock, 

 seems to demand for it more general attention than 

 it has yet received at the hands of the farmers of 

 New England. It requires good soil, and a clean 

 cultivation, not because it is a gross feeder, for it 

 is a much less exhaustive crop than oats, but it 

 seems less able to appropriate the required nour- 

 ishment from the soil than some other grains. 

 Cut before fully ripe, the straw is worth twice as 

 much as oat straw for feeding purposes, as it seems 



