1870 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
55 
there is not one farmer in ten who can get rid 
of his prejudice against color. My pigs have 
been the laughing-stock of the neighborhood. 
Mr. Chase and I have bought the Maple-sliade 
flock of thorough-bred Cotswolds, and since 
they arrived here they have attracted much at¬ 
tention. The Deacon came in one morning and 
remarked, “ Now that you have brought such a 
magnificent flock of sheep into the neighbor¬ 
hood, we will forgive you for bringing in the 
black hogs.” Now, it is not pleasant to pay 
$50 for a pair of young pigs and have an intel¬ 
ligent farmer like the Deacon make fun of your 
purchase. If j’ou wish to be on good terms 
with your neighbors, buy a Chester White or a 
Jefferson County pig. You may believe, as I 
do, that an Essex pig will do more to improve 
the quality and fattening properties of the pigs 
in the neighborhood than any other breed; but, 
if the neighbors wont use him, what is the 
good? You may tell them that the Essex hogs 
dress as white or whiter than white pigs, that 
the color is not even skin deep—that it is only 
the scarf and hair that are black. But it makes 
no sort of difference. “I hate a black hog any¬ 
way,”—said one of the judges on swine at the 
State Fair, and ninety-nine farmers out of a 
hundred would approve the sentiment. “Why, 
then, do you keep black pigs?”-—Simply be¬ 
cause I know of no white breed that has been 
kept so long pure. The value of a breed con¬ 
sists, first, in its possessing the form and quali¬ 
ties we desire; and second, in its power of im¬ 
parting them to common stock. The latter is 
the rarest and most valuable quality. A pig 
that possesses the former without the latter is 
worth no more than what the butcher will pay 
for him. The handsomest pigs in my yard to¬ 
day are grades. I showed a pen of five pigs, 
Essex grade, at the State Fair. Col. Weld, of the 
Agriculturist, when he saw them, remarked, 
“ They are splendid, but they are not thorough¬ 
bred.”—“How do you know that?” I asked. 
“ They have every mark of the Essex, and re¬ 
semble each other as closely as two peas.”— 
“They are too good for thorough-breds,”—he 
replied, and he was right. This fact, however, is 
not generally understood, and hence the ques¬ 
tions most frequently asked are, “ ITow do you 
like the Essex, or what do you think of the 
Berkshires, or the Suffolks,or the Yorkshires?” 
—whereas the question should be, Which breed 
gives the best grades ? And this is simply a ques¬ 
tion of pedigree. The breed that is the most 
thoroughly established is the best. The only 
point that needs to be urged on farmers is not 
to recommend this or that particular breed, but 
simply to show them the importance of using 
some kind of thorough-bred male—and this in 
all cases, whether of horses, cattle, sheep, or 
pigs. If this simple idea could be driven into 
the minds of all our farmers, it would add mil¬ 
lions to the value of our farm stock. I was in 
the Buffalo cattle yards a few weeks since. 
There were several thousand pigs in the pens, 
and every first-class pig in the yards showed 
more or less Berkshire or Essex blood. I had 
an experienced butcher with me, who shares 
the popular antipathy to black pigs, but he was 
forced to admit that wherever the Essex or 
Berkshire blood showed itself, “ there was the 
pig he wanted.” A great many of the pigs 
showed Chester White blood. They were good, 
strong, thrifty pigs, showing plenty of bone and 
offal, but the quality would not compare with 
the Berkshire and Essex grades. They would 
have made good heavy pork if they had been 
fatted two or three months longer. A visit to 
these cattle yards would do a farmer good. The 
contrast in the different lots of animals as they 
stood side by side in the pens is most striking; 
and I could not but ask myself over and over 
again, “Why will farmers raise, and keep for 
years, and attempt to fatten such miserable ani¬ 
mals?”—A good three-montlis-old calf sells for 
more than many of the three-year-old steers. 
There were two four-year-old Ohio Durham 
steers that sold for more money than a lot of a 
dozen “scallawags” of the same age. It is so 
too in the sheep market. I bought a lot of 
two hundred Michigan Merinos, three and four 
years old, for $2.40 each, that the dealer said he 
had spent considerable time in selecting from 
different flocks. At the same time I offered 
$8.60 each for a lot of Canada sheep, of only 
half the age, but the butchers outbid me. Now, 
I do not say that everybody should keep the 
mutton breeds of sheep, but I do say that, no 
matter what breed is kept, we should keep them 
well, and be constantly improving them; other¬ 
wise there is no profit in farming. 
As long as people will pay as much for light 
oats as for heavy oats, no one can blame farm¬ 
ers for raising the poorest variety they can find. 
There can be no doubt that it is easier to raise 
poor things than good ones. I presume the 
statements in regard to the large yield of Nor¬ 
way oats are true; and if I intended to raise 
oats for sale, I would sow the Norway, as it is 
one of the poorest varieties I am acquainted 
with. In England and Scotland, where oat¬ 
meal is extensively used, the great aim is to get 
heavy oats, and the price which they will com¬ 
mand depends on the quality. For instance, 
when a bushel of oats, weighing 40 lbs. per 
bushel, sells for 60 cents, one weighing 41 lbs. 
brings 62 cents. And every additional pound 
per bushel adds 2 cents to their market value, 
while every pound per bushel under 40 lbs. de¬ 
ducts 2 cents from their value. So that a bushel 
of oats weighing only 25 lbs. would be worth 
but 30 cents, while a bushel weighing 50 lbs. 
would be worth 80 cents. Professor S. W. 
Johnson, in the American Agricultural Annual 
for 1867, gives the results of Muller’s analyses 
of four samples of oats, the heaviest of which 
weighed 45.8 lbs. per bushel, and the lightest 
28.8 lbs. The latter contained of water, husk, 
and ash, 31 per cent, and the former not quite 
22 per cent, or, in other words, the heavy oats 
contained over 78 per cent of nutritive matter, 
and the light oats only 69 per cent. The heavy 
oats contained 59 3 1 4 per cent of starch, and the 
light oats only 51 1 1 2 per cent. According to 
this, if a bushel (34 lbs.) of the heavy oats is 
worth 60 cents, a bushel (34 lbs.) of the light 
oats is worth only 53 cents. He gives also an¬ 
other experiment in flouring light and heavy 
rye on a large scale. 100 lbs. of heavy rye gave 
10 lbs. more flour and 7 lbs. less bran than the 
light rye. Millers understand this matter, and 
will pay, weight for weight, much more for 
good heavy wheat than for a poor, light sample; 
but so far as I have observed, the produce deal¬ 
ers make comparatively little difference in the 
price of oats when sold by weight. 
Varieties of 
Oats. 
Weight per 
bushel of 
seed sown. 
Yield-per 
acre in 
bushels of 
32 lbs. 
Weight per 
bushel, lbs. 
Prop'ii'n 
of straw 
to 100 lbs. 
1 of grain. 
£ g 
§ 
When 
| harvested. 
1 
Excelsior. 
47 lbs 
60.6 
33% 
151 
Apl. 29 
Aug. 
2 
Somerset. 
44 “ 
94.2 
31 
138 
Apl. 29 
Aug. 9 
8 
White Schonen 
40 “ 
62.3 
371- 
135 
Apl. 29 
Aug. 2 
4 
Black Swedish. 
40 “ 
66.2 
30% 
187 
Apl. 29 
Aug. 23 
5 
P. Edw’ds Isl’d 
38 %“ 
62.2 
31% 
110 
May 1 
Aug. 17 
r> 
Brooks’. 
26 “ 
68.6 
31 
136 
May 1 
Aug. 17 
\ 
Norway. 
50.3 
23 
136 
May 11 
Aug. 24 
8 
Surprise. 
38.3 
46% 
130 
May 5 
Aug. 4 
Dr. Miles made some interesting experiments 
last year, on the Michigan Agricultural College 
farm, with eight varieties of oats. The results 
of which are shown in the table just given. 
Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 were from seed imported 
by the Department of Agriculture. It will be 
seen that the two English varieties, Nos. 1 and 
2, fall off nearly 13 lbs. in the weight per 
bushel. It would be interesting to know how 
much of this is due to soil, culture and climate, 
and how much to the want of the thorough use 
of the fauning-mill. I raised about five bushels 
of the Excelsior oats last year, and I think by 
running them two or three times through a 
good fanning-mill, and then through what they 
call in England a “ heaver,”—that is, a fanning- 
mill with a strong blast and no sieves,—I could 
get out a bushel that would weigh as much as 
the sample received from England. In my 
case the Excelsior were greatly superior, in 
yield and quality, to the common oats grown in 
the same field, sown at the same time, and. re¬ 
ceiving precisely the same treatment. The 
straw was stiffer and taller, and throughout the 
season you could see the difference to a row by 
the dark color, broad leaves, and more luxuri¬ 
ant growth of the Excelsior. I did not try the 
Somerset. In the Michigan trial it gave by far 
the largest yield per acre, but it weighed only 
31 lbs. per bushel. The Brooks’, we believe, is a 
Michigan variety. The Surprise was sown in 
an orchard, and the trees injured the crop, “ so 
that the yield does not fairly represent the value 
of the variety.” The weight per bushel indi¬ 
cates a high quality. The Norway makes a 
very poor show, both in yield and quality. The 
seed was received from a firm in New York, 
and contained a quantity of foul seeds, which 
were picked out by hand. The oats were not 
sown until the 11th of May, and this late sow¬ 
ing may have had something to do with the 
poor result. Our seasons are so short that a 
week or ten days delay in sowing, not unfre¬ 
quently makes all the difference between a good 
and poor crop of oats. 
There are so few experiments made in this 
country, that we have to be very thankful to 
any one who will furnish us any carefully ascer¬ 
tained facts; but it is to be regretted that the 
above trial was not made on a larger scale, and 
that all’the plots were not of the same size, and 
on the same land, and sown at the same time. 
The Department of Agriculture should furnish 
our Agricultural Colleges with seed enough to 
make such experiments entirely satisfactory. 
Glass-Covered Run for Early Chickens. 
It is a great object with breeders of choice 
fowls to have a few broods, at least, of very 
early chickens. If these do well, they will 
probably be the prize-winners at the fall shows, 
or they will be ready for use, if for market, as 
broilers, in May and June, when prices are the 
highest, or the pullets will be laying from Sep¬ 
tember, or earlier, to Christmas, when eggs are 
scarce and high. To raise early broods with 
success, the chickens must have no pullbacks, 
but a steady healthy growth from first to last. 
It is easy enough to get the eggs hatched, and 
to rear the chickens until they are a week old, 
but then commences a series of trials which 
few early broods live through in common 
hands. In June, the old hen, left uncooped, 
will take care of her brood almost without care 
from us, and with little feed, and the chicks 
grow and thrive, but in February and March 
the case is different. At hatching, the greater 
part of the yolk of the egg fills the stomach ot 
the chicken, and is gradually absorbed as food, 
