1865.J 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
339 
es. Regular feeding will encourage them to 
come home early, and to roost near the farm 
buildings where they are safest. A ton or two 
of turkies is too much property in these days 
to have lying round loose. Encourage them to 
come at call and keep the flocks well in hand. 
As the weather grows colder, increase the 
feed and improve its quality. To promote thrift, 
nothing perhaps is better than boiled potatoes 
mashed up with oat or corn meal and given 
warm. To prevent wasting, these should be 
fed in troughs made for the purpose. The bird 
is a gross feeder and almost any thing that or¬ 
dinarily goes to the pig stye will be acceptable. 
He has, however, his decided tastes, and knows 
which side his bread is buttered as well as taller 
bipeds. He has an eagle eye for grain, oats, 
bai’ley, buckwheat and corn, and all these may 
be given with decided advantage. His espeeial 
weakness is Indian corn, and his eye twinkles 
with delight at the sight of this golden grain. 
His flesh tells the story of his keeping. For 
the last six weeks of his life he should be plied 
with corn as the standard diet. There is no 
cheating the consumer. A lean bird is not the 
thing for forty cents a pound. Be honest, 
give him a plump corn fed fowl, and sleep with 
a thriving pocket and a good conscience, though 
the crib grows lean. Conkecticut. 
Right and Left-hand Plows. 
The question has been repeatedly raised, and 
is again proposed by a correspondent, who asks 
which plow is better, the one with “ a right 
hand, or left hand mold board ?” There is no 
difference at all in the operation of the two, 
when the mold boards are of the same model, 
only reversed. The correspondent alluded to 
writes that he likes the left-hand plow the best, 
“ because the leader can travel in the furrow.” 
The leader can walk equally well in the furrow 
of a right-hand plow. The leader is by no 
means in the proper place, when in the furrow, 
if either plow is in use. A single leader should 
always walk as close to the furrow as possible. 
Then he will draw in the same line with the 
rear team. Left-hand plows possess no superi¬ 
ority, in any respect, over right-hand plows, nor 
are they inferior to them. Any supposed superi¬ 
ority lies altogether in custom. A man who has 
always used a left-hand plow, is quite disposed 
to denounce a right-hand one, as an awkward 
and ineonvenient implement, and vice versa. 
Bells to Prevent Dogs Killing Sheep. 
O. H. Baker inquires “If he can cure his 
valuable dog of a propensity to chase sheep, 
and kill them?” Buckle a good sized bell 
under his neck, and he will never attempt to 
chase sheep. He will soon learn that, when he 
trots along, the tongue of the bell wiil make no 
noise. But, as soon as he starts on a run, his 
bell rings sueli a loud alarm as to make him 
desist from chasing sheep. . v dog disposed to 
kill sheep moves still and slily, and a dog can 
not catch a sheep while moving on a trot. 
Another effectual way is to buckle a strap 
around the dog’s neck with a light chain attach¬ 
ed, long enough to reach to his hind feet, where 
it is fastened to a round billet of hard wood, 
about four inches in diameter, and 18 inches 
Ions:. It is impossible for him to run with such 
a clog at his heels, while it will give him all the 
liberty that a dog needs ordinarily around the 
house or barn. Bells are sometimes attached to 
the necks of sheep to frighten dogs. This will 
be found effectual if cow bells be used instead 
of little tinkling ones that can scarcely be 
heard when a flock of sheep is running rapidly. 
There should be not less than ten bells in a flock 
of one hundred sheep; and the feeble sheep— 
not the horned bucks and strong wethers— 
should wear the bells, as dogs seldom attack 
such sheep. The feeble ones being left behind 
in the chase, would soon be overtaken by their 
pursuers, and fall an easy prey, if the strong 
and swift-footed carry the alarms. 
Western Farming. 
We have heard again from our La Salle County, 
(Ill.,) correspondent, “ Western Boy,” and are 
sorry not to have room for his whole letter, 
instead of seleeting those portions only which 
give a little light on Western Farming, and may 
therefore be useful to our readers.—He says: 
“ The editor seems to think that because our 
soil is rich, if it is only half tilled it yields most 
bountifully, but in this he is mistaken. Crops 
here need cultivation just as much as they do in 
the East, and though we do not have to hoe our 
corn, it is because we know enough to harrow 
it just before it comes up, and then we give it 
three to five plowings, according to whether a 
man is lazy or not. (This is sometimes the case 
with eastern men, who'will not plow their corn 
because it is not weedy.) Do not think because 
we raise big crops, we have no weeds, for there 
are fields here so overrun with weeds that it is 
impossible to raise even a middling good crop 
on them, and all along the roads and fences, 
and around our buildings it is nothing but 
weeds. I have seen weeds that came up after 
harvest, cut down with a machine in the fall 
before the land could be plowed. Some men can 
hardly hire a man to husk their corn, because 
it is so weedy. We do not [any longer?] move 
our stables to get away from the manure as you 
may suppose, but haul it all out on our land. 
The pasturage of our cattle is defined by a fence 
in some places already, but men do not think 
anything of driving cattle 100 or 200 miles, to 
the prairie. A man who cannot cultivate more 
than 30 acres here is called a lazy scamp.— 
‘ C. S. W.,’ Scott County, Iowa, thinks we do 
not make anything on our crops. Now I would 
like to ask him, how men who have come West 
since the rise in the price of land, could have 
bought and paid for farms, if they did not make 
something on their crops'; although land was 
$20 per acre, when corn was 15 cents per bushel, 
and some.places even as low as 5 cents? And 
how does a man support a family of eight or ten 
children on 40 acres of land, if he does not make 
something on his crops ? He says we need infor¬ 
mation on as many, though not the same, points 
as Eastern men. Now why don’t he give us in¬ 
formation on those points ? He says we try to 
cultivate too much land; but I think there are 
few who do, and those are mostly eastern men 
who think all they have to do out West to make 
money, is to plant their crops, no matter how it 
is done, and that they will grdw whether they 
get any cultivation or not.” 
Another letter on Western Farming comes to 
us from Scott Co., Iowa. It thus proceeds: 
“In the August number of the Agriculturist 
‘ C. S. W.’ gives his ideas, to which we take 
not the slightest exception, unless it be as re¬ 
gards the brag and boast, and exaggeration of 
the two sections. East and West. To our mind, 
they are both right and both wrong in their ap¬ 
parent regard, each of the other, as a sort of semi¬ 
humbug—‘ good enough for those that like it.’ 
Most assuredly each section understands itself. 
and exaggeration of any nature will not ultimate¬ 
ly avail anything. The West has much of which 
to boast, but it is a homely fact, that it does not 
invariably sustain its boastings in truth and 
practice. The East has but little, but much the 
longer end of the lever in fulfilment of its 
promises. Hence occasional hard times in the 
West; invariable good markets in the East; for 
many mouths make the market, while many 
bushels and railroads combine to make crops a 
drug. That the West, in soil, is immeasurably 
superior, no one in sanity will attempt to deny; 
nor will any one pretend to say aught against 
the fact of the better eastern farming, care and 
economy in every detail. Those of the East 
call us slovenly, extravagant, etc., because we 
do not rake our stubble, house our stock and 
implements, and often turn our hogs and cattle 
into the standing corn. And we of the West 
think it small business to grub around rocks 
and stumps, cut hay in fence corners, and 
measure out oats and corn to the horses. 
Truly ‘ circumstances alter cases.’ Give us as 
many men as we have acres, and you as many 
acres as you have men, and we will show you 
a balance sheet. We can learn, too, from the 
East many things that M'e should know, while 
the East can learn nothing save novelty and 
machinery from us, neither of practical benefit. 
“And this fact, ‘Western Boy,’ does not seem 
to appreciate, for in the latitude of La Salle, 
Ill., he does not care for the Agriculturist, there¬ 
fore he argues, that it will not do ‘ for the whole 
American continent.’ There are places, both in 
and out of Illinois, and we chance to know 
of several, that (jave not arrived at that envious 
distinction—that utopian sphere, in which men 
need know no more—characteristic of his vici¬ 
nity, if judged by his representations. There 
are places in the West, where plain, old fash¬ 
ioned people, in primitive ignorance, heed the 
teachings of the Agriculturist. There are sec¬ 
tions, in which men do farm, instead of scratch 
the ground, where the best method of loading 
manure, weaning calves, drawing hay, stacking 
grain, fattening hogs, housing stock, etc., do not 
come aWiss to back nor pocket. The West 
need only take the advice needed by it, and we 
know that even ‘ W. B.’ has taken hints and 
ideas from the Agriculturist, of more than infini¬ 
tesimal value to himself. A lively pieture and 
a true one is his, of driving home the cattle in 
the fall, rolling fat. He might have shown you 
the same cattle in winter, snowed up, shivering 
in the lee of straw-stacks, eating snow, or drink¬ 
ing water from ice holes, or white with sleetj 
picking their hay from out the mud and mire. 
The writer has. seen cattle lying in their feed 
lot, completely covered with snow. Nature was 
more kind to them than the owner. Did the 
AgriculUirist never say anything about warm 
quarters for stock, good breeds, or economical 
feeding ? Did it never tell you how to make any 
simple little implement, or contrivance to save 
labor or money ? Did it never tell you of ‘ hum¬ 
bugs,’ describe grains, grasses, weeds, or insects, 
and did it never feed you from any of its 219 re¬ 
cipes for corn bread, etc. ? I guess it did. West¬ 
ern Boj’’, and I guess it will, and does, do for other 
places, besides ‘ alongside stone walls, amongst 
stumps, ditches,’ etc.—Respectfully, K." 
Live and Dead Weight of Sheep. —We 
see it stated that the following English rule is 
tolerably accurate for sheep in fair order, not 
very fat. The weight of each (dressed) quarter 
is one seventh of the live weight, e. g. If a sheep 
weighs 140 lbs., the carcass will weigh 80 lbs. 
