1894 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
231 
able, and should not be tolerated. If obliged to pur¬ 
chase eggs for the incubators, get them from some one 
who makes a business of furnishing eggs for broilers. 
This is a regular business now. 
Testing the Eggs, and Ventilation. 
If the eggs are white-shelled they may be tested 
very well on the fourth day, but if dark-shelled, not 
very well, unless by an expert, before the seventh 
day. If the eggs be held up to the sunlight and ex¬ 
amined through the usual testing tube, a big clot of 
blood may be seen with many fine veins radiating 
from it, and which may be compared to a spider and 
its web. This clot increases rapidly, and on the eighth 
day motion may be seen. After the eighth day al¬ 
ways in testing, look for life, and if it be not visible, 
the egg should be taken out. If one have not the 
time to carefully examine every egg, where there is a 
general redness of the veins life may be safely taken 
for granted. If the veins are black, or the eggs get 
quickly cold when taken out of the incubator, and no 
life is visible, the chick has died from some cause. 
Always test by sunlight, and do not be afraid to keep 
the eggs out in a moderately warm room for 20 or 30 
minutes. 
The incubator may be run successfully either with 
or without ventilation for the first 19 days. Either 
every ventilator hole may be plugged up, or a moder¬ 
ate amount of air, say, what will pass through an inch 
auger hole, may be allowed to pass through. On 
the 19th day, when moisture is applied, the holes 
should be opened wide. If no ventilation be allowed, 
the eggs get all the fresh air they need when taken 
out to be turned. If too much air be allowed to pass 
through the incubator, the eggs evaporate so rapidly 
as to kill the chicks. J. L. Campbell sells the best 
gauge for ventilation I ever saw. If one doesn’t care 
to buy one of these, he might set a hen at 
the same time the incubator is started, and 
try to have the air spaces in the large ends of 
the eggs in the incubator correspond exactly 
with the spaces in those under the hen, by 
increasing and lessening the amount of air 
that is passing through the incubator. More 
ventilation is needed in summer than in 
winter. 
General Remarks About Details. 
It is better to have several small incu¬ 
bators than one large one, for if there be 
an accident to one, the loss is not so great. 
Start two at the same time, and by the time 
the eggs are tested from both on the 12th 
or 14th day, unless remarkably good ones, all 
that are left may be put in one. On the 19 th 
day. when the moisture is applied, the eggs 
should be placed in close contact, as under the 
hen, and they will hatch better than when 
scattered over the drawer. Carefully wipe 
every egg before placing it in the incubator, 
or lice may be introduced and then good-bye 
to all hopes until rid of the last one. Mark 
each egg on one side when placed in the drawer, 
and in turning them take each one separately 
by the end and turn it over. The marks enable 
one to know absolutely that every egg has been 
turned twice each day. If the eggs are not 
turned, the germs grow to one side of the shells, 
and either will not hatch at all or produce cripples. 
Have the brooders made before the hatch comes off, and 
transfer the chicks as soon as the hatch is over, and do 
not try to brood chicks in the incubator. Make the egg 
trays reversible, and reverse the ends every time the 
tray is taken out. Cover the moisture pans with wire 
netting if placed below the eggs, so that the chicks 
will not fall in and drown. If the moisture pans are 
placed above the eggs see that the pans do not touch 
the eggs or interfere with the thermometer, which 
should have a support of its own on the 19 th day when 
the eggs are closed up for the hatch, or the chicks will 
knock it over and make it very difficult to keep track 
of the heat, especially if there be no regulator. There 
is no sale for broilers, to speak of, until April. Bear 
this in mind, that when the chicks are hatched the 
trouble only begins. It is not much trouble to 
hatch the eggs after one learns how. The cellar 
is a good place for the incubator provided it is well 
ventilated, but not otherwise. A lady writes me that 
she has a 1,000 egg incubator in her cellar, and that 
out of 6,000 eggs she has gotten 25. chicks. The 
chances are that the cellar has been the cause of the 
loss. Better by far a room in the top of the house 
than an unventilated cellar. f. a. lehmann. 
A Seeding Problem. —I have a piece of clay land 
on which the grass has run out; 1 wish to get it re¬ 
seeded again as soon as possible. Last fall I turned 
the sod under, and this spring I purpose to sow it 
with oats, after harvest turn the stubble under, and 
seed alone with clover and Timothy. Will some one 
that has tried this plan give his experience ? g. p . 
“A POUND OF BUTTER” 
Its History from Cow to Consumer. 
THE BIG three: silo, SEPARATOR AND “STARTER.” 
Part III. 
What Happens to the Cream. 
We left the 20 pounds of cream taken from the 
night’s milking in the tank of cold water. At about 
half past 8 I saw it put into the cream vat and mixed 
thoroughly with the cream from six other milkings. 
This was Monday night. 
“ How often do you churn, anyway ? ” I asked. 
“ Twice a week, at 9 o’clock sharp Tuesdays and 
Fridays.” 
“ What, do you mean to say that you will churn this 
cream we got to-night within 12 hours after it was 
taken from the cows ? ” 
“ Certainly. Within 24 hours of the time of milk¬ 
ing, you can have the butter from that milk at your 
home in New Jersey.” 
“ That must be the sweet-cream butter they tell us 
about.” 
“ Not a bit of it—from sour and well-ripened cream.” 
“ How do you do it ? ” 
“Well, the first step towards getting there is to 
start, and we have used a ‘ starter ’ in that cream that 
will carry it right along to a finish. We are thus able 
to ripen that cream with absolute certainty. It is a 
good deal surer than a yeast cake in bread making, or 
a baking powder for biscuits. 
What is a “ starter ” ? The term is often used by 
dairy writers, but we do not remember to have seen a 
plain answer in print. Imagine a square wooden tank, 
metal lined. There is a faucet at the bottom, and at 
the top a cover so fitted with screws and bolts that it 
can be made perfectly air-tight. Now another little 
tank or stout box holding, say, a gallon. This is filled 
The Way They Churn at Dix Hill Farm. Fig. 68. 
with skim-milk from the separator heated to a certain 
degree and then closed. In 24 hours, it sours and 
forms a thick curd. This is the “ starter.” Twenty- 
four hours before churning, the cream is put into the 
large vat and warmed to 70 degrees. One way to do 
this is to take a deep pail containing hot water and move 
it about in the cream. Then a quantity of the starter 
equal to one per cent of the cream is put into the cream 
and well stirred in. The vat is then closed air-tight 
and left for 24 hours, with the certainty that the cream 
will then be ripe for churning. On the Monday of my 
visit, this had been done at 9 o’clock in the morning. 
We opened the vat to put in the night’s cream, and 
then closed it air-tight again. That is the “ starter.” 
Scientific men would tell you all about how the sour¬ 
ing of the skim-milk under these conditions starts the 
minute forms of life known as bacteria which, when 
put into the cream, spread and develop all through so 
that with a certain time, temperature and proportion, 
they give exact results. That is true, but perhaps some 
of us may understand it better if we say that the sour 
skim-milk sours the cream, and, by putting just so 
much sour Inilk in, regulating the temperature of the 
cream and keeping it air-tight, we are able, in 24 
hours, to carry this souring just far enough. 
“ It pays you to use the ‘starter’ does it?” I asked 
Mr. Carll. 
“ Certainly—in more ways than one. It is exact. 
We know just what we are doing. The cream is now 
all evenly ripened. Before, the best we could do, some 
cream was ripened more than others. Then we would 
put the cream by the kitchen stove and every one that 
went by it gave it a stir. It used to take us 60 
minutes or more to churn with no uniformity of time, 
and I always found fat left in the buttermilk. Now 
we churn in 18 minutes, and get all the fat out—with 
a better quality of butter, too. My reason for these re¬ 
sults is that with the starter we are able to reduce the 
ripening of the cream to an exact science so that we 
know just what we are doing. This is why I use the 
special vats and carry out the exact directions. This, 
I believe, gives truer results than the plan some people 
have of saving a little buttermilk from a previous 
churning to mix with the cream. ” 
“ The ‘starter’ is just as useful in the dairy as good 
yeast and bread pans are in bread making,” put in 
Mrs. Carll. Since my visit, Mr. Carll says he has tried 
a new plan of using a prepared dry “ferment” in 
place of the “ starter.” This ferment is sent by mail 
or otherwise, and seems to have the effect of ripening 
the cream just right. It is as yet only an experiment 
with Mr. Carll. 
A Chapter On Churning. 
At precisely 9 o’clock preparations for churning 
were begun. The cream vat was opened and we found 
the cream thick, yet running easily through the faucet. 
It had a taste somewhat like that of buttermilk, and a 
smell like that of the “ starter” or sour skim-milk. 
There were just 142 pounds of cream which repre¬ 
sented 1,100 pounds of milk—four days’ work of the 
cows, besides what was used in the house, which 
amounts to about six pounds a day. 
A 50-gallon Moseley & Stoddard barrel churn was 
used—a crank at each side so that two men could turn 
at it. The first step was to rinse it thoroughly by 
pouring in a pailful of hot water and turning it over a 
few times. Then this hot water was drawn off and 
cold water used in the same way. This was to pre¬ 
vent the cream from sticking to the churn. You will 
notice that when you handle cream or butter 
with dry wood it always sticks. That is be¬ 
cause the wood absorbs the fat. Wet wood 
has absorbed water and therefore cannot ab¬ 
sorb the butter fat. Mr. Carll gi/es this good 
rule: ‘'Always have the tool used in handling 
the butter colder than the butter is.“ He there¬ 
fore scalds every wooden tool just before using 
and at once soaks it in the coldest water ob¬ 
tainable before putting it in contact with 
cream or butter. The cream was drawn from 
the vat, weighed and strained into the churn. 
A tin strainer, like a sieve, was used for this, 
the object being to keep out all lumps of curd 
which sometimes get into the cream. Many 
dairymen do not strain the cream, but Mr. 
Carll considers it very necessary as these 
lumps of curd will surely make “white specks’ 
in the butter if they get into the chum' 
There were a number of such lumps in the 
strainer after all the cream had passed through 
The cream vat was at once washed out with 
cold water, rinsed in the boiling water and left 
open to thoroughly air. No soap is used in this 
dairy. Boiling water is cleansing enough 
used alone. The 142 pounds of cream filled the 
churn about half full. Six teaspoonfuls of 
Hansen’s butter color were added, and at ex¬ 
actly 9:14 the churn was closed and started. The 
thermometer showed that the cream was at 65 
degrees. After many trials, Mr. Carll has settled upon 
this temperature as best for churning. This tempera¬ 
ture is secured exactly by adding cold or hot water. 
Two men turned the churn as shown in Fig. 68. 
They made about 60 revolutions per minute, stopping 
four times during the churning to let off the gas by 
opening the vent plug. At exactly 9:30 the chum 
was stopped. The butter came in 16 minutes. Since 
the starter has been used, churning has never varied 
more than two minutes either way from 18, while 
before, as I have said, there was no telling how long 
the work would last. 
(To be Continued). 
CORN, PUMPKINS, GRAIN AND GRASS. 
GROWN FOR COW FOOD ON THIS FARM. 
The Pedigree of a Corn Crop. 
The first crops raised after the turning of the sod 
are corn and pumpkins. The plowing is all done with 
a sulky plow, the Big Injun, which does excellent 
work. My farm is a gravelly soil and very level. I 
plow so as to keep the land as level as possible, not in 
beds with ditches between. For corn, I plow in the 
spring—in fact, do no fall plowing, except for winter 
wheat. After the plowing comes a thorough harrow¬ 
ing with a spring-tooth harrow. Then I mark for the 
rows with a marker that cuts deep in the soil. I have 
two markers, one which makes the rows 3J^ feet 
apart and the other for fodder corn makes them three 
feet apart. 
Last year I had 6>^' acres, one half of which was 
planted with Pride of the North, and the other h^lf 
