1893 
583 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Live Stock Matters. 
FORKFULS OF FACTS. 
Is the Heifer too Young? —I have a 
full-blood Jersey heifer which was 
dropped February 2, and is very larjre 
and well-developed for her age. She got 
in heat when five months old and has 
been so once or twice since. Would it 
be advisable to have her served in Sep¬ 
tember, say when a little over nine 
months old, or would she then be too 
young, and would it be detrimental to 
her future usefulness to come in as 
young as 16 months ? w. g. r. 
R. N.-Y.—We should keep the heifer 
until at least one year old before having 
her served. 
Soap Grease for Hens. —Some time 
ago I read a conversation between two 
members of The Rurai.’s circle, about 
the best way to use up soap grease. 
Here is the way two women manage : 
My daughter has charge of the chickens 
(the only poultry we keep) and when we 
have saved a gallon or two of trimmings 
from the meat cooked for the family, 
we boil the stuff, bones and all, until the 
meat and skins are well cooked. Then 
when it is cool enough we feed it to the 
chickens. I think any one who heard 
their songs of gratitude, and saw the p ; le 
of “great, white pearls” in the egg bas¬ 
ket, would be constrained to do likewise. 
Sometimes we mix the warm meat with 
bran, whole wheat, or corn meal and all 
are equally enjoyed by the chickens. 
With eggs at one cent apiece, good soap 
at five cents a cake and pearline five 
cents a box, I would rather feed my 
soap-grease to the hens, and buy my soap. 
Brown County, O. mks. o. m. g. 
feathers which appeared. After con¬ 
tinuing this treatment for some time 
the habit apparently disappeared, so 
that the birds were enabled to grow a 
full coat of new feathers. No change of 
any consequence was made in the food, 
etc., ana the suppression of the habit 
was probably due to the disagreeable 
taste of the aloes. The means taken to 
discourage this habit necessitated fre¬ 
quent handling of the fowls, and would 
not pay with ordinary stock. It would 
be more economical to kill the b ; rds first 
affected. 
It does not seem probable that a ra¬ 
tion especially deficient in some constit¬ 
uent is always the cause of this trouble, 
for in this case four pens of fowls were 
fed alike and the habit developed in 
only one, and was afterwards suppressed 
in this pen without any radical change 
in the food. The habit appeared, de¬ 
veloped and had begun to disappear 
during the few months in which almost 
no change was made in the composition 
of the ration. During this time quite a 
liberal amount of fresh-cut bone, con¬ 
taining considerable lean meat, was fed. 
Before this even a larger proportion of 
fresh bone had been fed. 
The most apparent cause for the de¬ 
velopment of this habit was idleness, to 
some extent consequent upon the neces¬ 
sary confinement of the fowls, although 
they all spent a fair portion of time 
scratching for their grain in the straw 
which covered the floor of the pen. This 
habit, however, which may sometimes 
be a “symptom” of disease, is more 
often, perhaps, induced by improper 
food, lack of animal food, or lack of 
variety in the ration. A pen of laying 
hens fed at this station about two months 
almost exclusively upon Indian corn and 
corn meal, picked not only the feathers 
but the flesh from each other so that 
two were killed. This same trouble has 
been seen elsewhere when birds were 
closely confined, with little chance or 
inducement for exercise and no change 
in food. 
Brown County, O. mks. o. m. g. 
Leaves for Stock.— So great is the 
reported scarcity of fodder in some parts 
of France that leaves of vines and even 
those of trees are being gathered for 
stock. The following rules originally 
given in the last century are printed for 
the benefit of French farmers : 
When ;he harvest is finished I begin to 
gather the leaves, letting the men prune 
the trees in the same way as is usually 
done in winter. The large wood is put 
on one side, and all the tops and leafy 
branches are put into small heaps. If 
the weather is favorable during the day, 
they should be turned over and left until 
the evening. The amount of dryness 
necessary for them is soon discovered by 
touching with the hand. They should 
not be too dry, as will occur if the sun is 
too strong and they are left several days 
upon the earth. This should be guarded 
against by waiting until the next day 
after the dew has fallen, and also by not 
carrying them at midday, otherwise they 
will not regain the suppleness of good 
forage. It is also necessary to avoid 
crushing them when fresh, because they 
will then mold and become of no value. 
They should be tied up and put into the 
barn or under a shed. The most appe¬ 
tizing portion, that least charged with 
wood, should be given to cattle, and the 
most branchy to sheep. The wood which 
remains in the rack after the leaves have 
been consumed can be used for kindling 
purposes. 
In a bulletin issued by the West Vir¬ 
ginia Experiment Station, this statement 
is ir ade by one who feeds mountain sheep: 
Sheep run in these mountains and do 
well. One man can care for 1,500 during 
the year. During the winter, they are 
kept principally on browse, especially 
when the ground is covered with snow. 
I can keep sheep on this better than on 
hay. Sugar and beech are the best 
browse. We cut the trees all winter. 
One tree will usually be sufficient for 10 
sheep one day. I have kept sheep here 
five years, and have never fed more than 
a sled load of hay and have given them 
no grain and they do well. I do not 
think one would lose over five per cent 
of the sheep if properly managed, and 
100 ewes will raise nearly 100 lambs. 
Feather Eating. —An excellent bul¬ 
letin from the New York Experiment 
Station gives an account of the treat¬ 
ment given a pen of poultry that had 
begun to eat feathers : 
_ After this habit had been very se¬ 
riously prevalent for some weeks, vase¬ 
line or lard (sometimes one and some¬ 
times the other) in which had been 
mixed powdered aloes was applied to 
the old feathers near the spots which 
had been picked bare and on the new 
TEXAS FEVER WITHOUT TICKS. 
I have been reading with interest the 
articles in The R. N.-Y. in regard to 
ticks and the kinds of fevers in cows, 
known by various names such as Texas 
fever, splenic fever, red water, murrain, 
etc., but generally called red water here. 
What we should all desire to get at are 
the facts in the case—ticks or no ticks— 
therefore I give my experience, and if it 
will help to solve the problem, good must 
come from it. 
In 1885 I made n y first purchase of 
Jersey cattle, in Baltimore, about the 
middle of March. I bought two mature 
cows, one five-months-old heifer and one 
young bull. I brought them home and 
kept them in a town lot with other eat- 
t e two years without loss. In Septem¬ 
ber of the first year they were all slightly 
but not seriously sick with fever. In Jan- 
uary, 1888, I moved them, with others I 
had purchased, to my present home, a 
farm of 325 acres, one-third high and 
two-thirds low lands, but not subject to 
overflow. About the middle of June of 
that year my bull was found dead in a 
small pasture joining the cattle lot, and 
the same day a cow I had bought in Con¬ 
necticut a year or two before became 
sick and died in less than a week. Both 
had been here two years and had been 
with native cattle and probably been bit¬ 
ten by hundreds of ticks. In 1889, I 
bought in eastern Virginia three IIol- 
stein-Friesian cows that had been there 
a year. In the following May or J une I 
lost one of them. Either that year or the 
next I bought a Holstein-Friesian bull 
in New Jersey, and in September he died. 
The next year I got a Jersey bull from 
a friend 10 miles away, and in September 
he died. He had been in the country 
from calfhood, and was then four years 
old. I then bought one from a neighbor 
less than five miles away, and in three 
weeks he died. The two latter were 
raised among ticks, but on high land ; as 
soon as transferred to low land they died. 
I then, in June following, bought five 
cows and a heifer in Richmond and Gor- 
donsville, Va. In four weeks three of 
the cows were dead, and that in winter 
when there were no ticks to hurt them. 
I attributed their loss to a change of 
feed and water. I know of no other 
cause. Last winter I bought both a Hol¬ 
stein and a Jersey bull, and I am keeping 
them in a horse lot—higher land than 
the cow barn—and they drink only well 
water. I hope to be able to bring them 
through all right. 
Now to recapitulate : No cow has died 
after the first yeir on my place from 
fever or red water, as I call it, for all 
had the same symptoms. Home-bred cat¬ 
tle brought from different surroundings 
were afflicted in the same way as North¬ 
ern cattle. I do not believe they died 
from ticks—that is, the poison was not 
conveyed by the bite of these pests, as 
most of them had an acquaintance of 
from two to four years with them, and 
the others died in January. During this 
time I have lost no native or “ scrub ” 
cattle from like causes, or any animals 
less than two years old. I do not write 
this to prove that ticks will not kill cat¬ 
tle, for they may ; but to show that they 
are not the only means of conveying this 
poison that is so fatal to strange cattle. 
I hope others will give their experience 
so as to try to get at the facts. 
Wayne Co., N C. t. b. parker. 
IftimXtMMttia gMlvwtte’ing. 
In writing to advertisers, please always mention 
The Kural New-Yorker. 
cS?reL" r o k f VETERINARY SURGEONS 
Lectures will begin OCTOHKB 2, 1803. For 
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High-Class Shropshires 
75 yearling rams that will weigh 250 to 800 pounds 
and shear 12 to 15 pounds at maturity; and 150 year- 
link ewes, to weigh 17ft to 210 pounds, and shear'.) to 
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logue THE WILLOWS, 
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FARM POULTRY. s a,mZ. 
PINK TREE FARM, Jamesburg, N. J. 
ATTENTION ! 
Farmers and Cattle Raisers, 
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Death on Cattle Fly 
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C. E. MILLS OIL CO., Syracuse, N.Y. 
Buckley’s Watering Device 
FOR watering stock in the stable 
C. E. BUCKLEY & CO., 
Patentees and Manufacturers, Dovbii Plains, N. Y 
KINGSTON FOUNIIKY AND MACHINE 
CO., Limited, Kingston, Ont., Canada, Sole Manu¬ 
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IfT RELIABLE AGENTS WANTED. 
GUERNSEYS! 
The GRANDEST of DAIRY Breeds. 
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nre daughters and granddaughters of the renowned 
Squire Kent, 1504 A. G. C. C. and of the finest strains 
on Guernsey or In America—ComuB, son of Squire 
Kent and Statelllte, son of Kohlm head the herd. All 
particulars In regard to Breed and Herd oheerfully 
Klven. 8. P. TABER WILLETTS, 
“ The Old Brick,” Roslvn, L. I., N. Y. 
HAMPSHIRE DOWN 
SHEEP. 
Kwes and Ewe Lambs, Yearling Hams and Ram 
Lambs for sale. None bettor In America. 
Also Cheshire Swine. 
IP?” All Stock Registered. 
JNO. I. OOKDON, Mercer, Pa. 
KNOB MOUNTAIN POULTRY FARM. 
KWC * 1 an <* 8 - c - BROWN LKG- 
“uKHS a spec alty. Eggs and birds for sale. 
MAULGN SAGER, Orangeville, Pa. 
Recorded Berkshires. 
Why pay high expressage ? You can buy the 
best direct Imported blood near home. The 
“ Wlllgwood Herd 99 will have about 100 pigH 
to select from. Order at once. Prices lowest 
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WILLIS WHINERY, WINONA, O., 
Breeder and Shipper of 
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Horses, 
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Director Texas Ex. Station and Professor 
of Agriculture In the Agricultural and 
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