238 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
April 6 
latter are many of them pure breeds. He considers 
the White Wyandottes the best, because they are the 
best sitters. 
His ration differs from that of the others, in having 
a larger proportion of corn meal. He mixes 150 
pounds of meal, 50 of white middlings or No. 2 flour, 
25 of bran and 25 of Poultry Food, wets it enough 
thoroughly to moisten it, and feeds it to ducks and 
fowls, young and old. He feeds enough so that tlie 
ducks have feed by them all the time. He feeds 
wheat, oats and corn, to the sitting hens nothing but 
corn. His ducks have the run of a piece of woods in 
which they find a grass which is green whenever the 
ground is bare of snow, so that the question of green 
food is very easily settled for them. Mr. Tuthill has 
been many years at the business, and does a little 
farming besides. His soil is a little heavier, there¬ 
fore not quite so suitable naturally for the poultry 
business. 
A little farther to the west, we visited a firm of 
poultrymen somewhat younger in the business, R. B. 
<fc C. II. Dayton. They make a specialty of Pekin 
ducks, Toulouse geese, and W. Leghorns. They have 
a fine new house, well adapted for the rearing of 
fancy poultry. It is divided by wire netting into 
pens, each of which will accommodate about a dozen 
fowls, and each having a yard outside. It has an 
alley extending its whole length, and from this alley 
the hens can be fed and the eggs gathered. The 
Messrs. Dayton captured 13 prizes with 12 birds at 
the Providence show last winter. They make as 
much of a specialty of fowls as of ducks, and their 
aim is to build up a trade in choice poultry products 
direct to the consumers. They have a large brooder 
house, an incubator house with several Prairie States 
in operation, and are well equipped for business. 
They are in the experimental stage in some ways. 
Last year they fed celery to their ducks with good 
results, and will try it further this year. They will 
also try the plan of scattering their fowls in indi¬ 
vidual houses over the farm, thinking thereby to get 
a larger percentage of fertile eggs. 
Over near Center Moriches is the Brookside Poultry 
Farm, the property of S. B. Wilcox, who has some¬ 
thing like 800 ducks. He has been many years in the 
business, and last year was ahead of them all in get¬ 
ting fertile eggs ; this year he is behind. His location 
is on the west bank of a creek. He has a large, new 
incubator room, with a capacity of nearly 30 incu¬ 
bators, but is already talking of enlarging it. He 
divides his breeding stock into smaller flocks than 
most of the others, thus having fewer drakes together. 
The ducks get a mixture of corn meal, bran, mid¬ 
dlings. beef scrap and clover hay. Sometimes turnips 
or mangels are cooked and fed, and sometimes creek 
grass is fed instead of clover hay, and fish instead of 
scrap. The whole grain is corn, wheat and oats. 
These fish are small ones purchased of the fishermen 
for 25 cents per bushel, and are always fed cooked. 
The ducks, like all the rest, are Pekins, and are fine 
specimens. Most of Mr. Wilcox’s buildings are new, 
and in excellent shape, and like the other duck 
farmers, he seems to be prospering. 
The last man visited was the newest beginner, and 
was doing business on the smallest scale. This was 
Win. Lukert, and he is the one to whom I referred 
last week as cooking his feed. He had 98 laying ducks, 
and the day of my visit, he got 74 eggs. He feeds 
corn meal, middlings, bran, wheat and corn, but he 
cooks all his feed. He has also been able, having a 
smaller number to supply, to get enough creek grass 
and fish for them, and these are said to give better 
results than beef scrap and clover. His first ducks 
were hatched in December and were large enough for 
market. He keeps hens also, and had both chickens 
and young ducks in his brooder house. The former 
were not doing so well as the ducks, as the house was 
too damp. He runs four incubators. 
There are many more duck raisers in this territory, 
as well as in other parts of the Island, but these are 
fairly representative of their methods. It is interest¬ 
ing to observe that the same practices that bring the 
highest success one year, seem to fail the next. All 
these men, too, have begun at the bottom, and worked 
out their own success. Nature has favored them in 
location and climate, but they have been compelled 
to do the rest in pushing the Long Island tagged duck 
to the front as a market dainty. F. H. v. 
Honest Apple Testimony. — I have fruited the 
McIntosh apple from scions direct from the originator 
in Canada, and it has been quite extensively planted 
here. It is of the Roseau family, a rather slow, 
slender grower, and fairly productive. The fruit is 
beautiful and of the best quality ; but like others of 
its family, it is subject to fungous diseases, and should 
be planted only in rich, warm soils and dry climates. 
It scabs so badly here that it is practically worthless, 
and I have regrafted my trees. a. w. 
East Roxbury, Vt 
SOILING AND PARTIAL SOILING OF COWS. 
More than a quarter of a century ago, when I first 
began dairy farming, the question of soiling had at¬ 
tracted but little attention among practical men. True 
there was a class of men who periodically made their 
appearance in the press, showing immense profits 
from soiling ; but I doubt whether one of them ever 
tried it. They were best represented by an acquaint¬ 
ance of mine—the poorest farmer I ever knew—who 
took charge of the agricultural columns of a daily 
paper, serenely remarking that it paid better to tell 
other people how to farm, than it did to farm it him¬ 
self. I determined to investigate for myself, and the 
first discovery that I made was that 1 could not afford 
to confine the cows all the time, and have all the sum¬ 
mer’s manure to handle over and draw to the field. So 
I adopted the plan of confining the cows in one field 
throughout the season, and drawing all their food to 
them. The field on which they were thus confined, I 
always plowed for corn the following year, and it 
never failed to produce an excellent crop. The course 
pursued involved a great deal of care and labor of the 
most personal kind ; for while hired help could do 
ordinary routine farm work, when iteame to the sum¬ 
mer foddering of cows, they seemed to be completely 
off the scent and utterly without judgment. 
My first feeding was of rye as soon as it was high 
enough to mow. and this was followed by early clover. 
Timothy, and upland grass, in succession until July 1, 
when the first sowing of oats was in the milk and 
ready for the scythe. This the cows like better than 
they do any ocher green food ; but an acre of it will 
not furnish as much food as will the same amount of 
land in other crops. I usually provided four sowings 
of oats, about a week being permitted between sow¬ 
ings, by which—except for an occasional drought— 
the herd would be provided for through July. 
For August, my dependence was upon second- 
growth clover, Hungarian grassand, towards the last of 
the month, upon sowed corn, supplemented by nitrog¬ 
enous foods, such as cotton-seed meal, gluten meal, 
etc. ; for sowed corn alone is not a well balanced 
ration. Though I succeeded fairly well by this 
method, yet there were some difficulties to be con¬ 
tended with. A drought would sometimes upset the 
finest calculations, as the different crops would fail to 
come forward in time for the dairy. The labor was 
used to some disadvantage, as the feeding took a part 
of the forenoon and a part of the afternoon, thus 
breaking up the day for one man and team. It also 
interfered materially with operations in haying and 
harvest. For these reasons, I modified my plans by 
providing two fields for the cows. On one of them, 
the cows were fed as before until haying commenced, 
when they were given the run of both fields, thus pro¬ 
viding them with abundant pasture until August, or 
until haying and harvest were ended, after which they 
were fed upon one field as before and the other was 
permitted to grow to be used as late pasture when the 
sowed corn should be gone. 
By these means, 1 have succeeded in bringing my 
farm to a good state of productiveness, and have made 
fair returns ; but as the price of milk lessened and the 
price of labor did not materially change, I have still 
further modified my plans. An excellent summer 
food is early cut hay, cured in a bright condition, 
and not made too dry. Cows relish this all summer. 
We have adopted the plan of milking in the stable, 
and whenever the pasture is deficient, we keep up the 
yield of milk by feeding in the mangers, night and 
morning, this bright, early-cut hay, supplemented in 
the autumn with bran and other grain. By this 
means, an immense amount of labor is saved, and in 
the present proportion that labor cost beax-s to dairy 
pi'ofits, this is important, and the subject deserves more 
attention from farmers. Charles e. benton. 
Bristol County, Mass. 
IRRIGATING WITH THE PLOW. 
HOW TO HOLD MOISTURE IN THE SOIL. 
It has always seemed to me that the large annual 
rainfall of the States bordering the Great Lakes, 
which averages from 36 to 40 inches annually, ought 
to be sufficient for the wants of summer crops. It has 
been difficult in past years to say just how much was 
needed, say, to grow a ci-op of cabbage or potatoes ; 
but the results of some of the investigations at experi¬ 
ment stations, throw some light upon the subject. 
At the recent special meeting of the Ohio State Horti- 
cultui'al Society at Toledo, W. J. Green of the Ohio 
Expei’iment Station, read a paper upon the close 
planting of celery, telling how to grow it 6x8 inches, 
and avoid earthing up. He said that it is necessary 
to have from the clouds, or else supply it, not less 
than one inch of water per week. Estimating the 
period of growth at 17 weeks, we would, according to 
this, need 17 inches of water to grow a vei*y succulent, 
close-plaiited crop, that is acknowledged on all hands 
to reed a maximum water supply. All our early 
garden crops, as well as strawberries and x’aspberries, 
do not take a longer pei'iod than this, or any more 
water ; so it may safely be said that less than one-half 
our regular x - ainfall will be sufficient to water all our 
crops, if we can contrive to conserve it in times when 
the showers are bunched at long intervals, with 
droughts between. 
There is scarcely a season when the Northern States 
do not have more than 17 inches of rainfall between 
the going of frost and July 1 ; so, if we can save this 
from running off or evaporating, we may expect to 
carry nearly all our crops to maturity. To save the 
water of the spring showers, it is only necessai’y to 
have the ground in a receptive state—that is, mellow 
and spongy. Gravelly or sandy soils naturally take 
all the water that falls, provided they are not packed 
or solidified on top. Clay soils, however, must be 
thoroughly loosened as deep as it is desirable. To do 
this, some berry growex*s of my acquaintance are 
using a subsoil plow. One uses a purchased imple¬ 
ment with a sole like a pumpkin seed, that disturbs 
and lifts pi’etty nearly all the bottom of the furrow, 
so that with a heavy team on both plow and subsoiler, 
he is able to loosen the ground to a depth of 16 inches. 
If such a soil is thoroughly supplied with humus, by 
growing clover or plowing under green crops, it plows 
up loose, and lies two or three inches higher after 
plowing, than before, and its capacity for holding a 
greater quantity of water is increased, at the same 
time that it parts with it more slowly, from its sponge¬ 
like nature. It is safe to say that a somewhat retent¬ 
ive soil, prepared in this way, either late in the fall, 
or early in the spring, would easily take all the water 
that fell in the spring months. It may also be said 
that such a soil, with proper management, will suffer 
less in periods of drought, than sandy soils. 
A field with a 16-inch mellow top soil, filled with 
water, would, with the data from which I started, be 
able to produce fair crops of almost any summer 
grain, or vegetable, or fruit, without rain after July 
1, if the moisture could be kept in the ground. 
Water is brought to the surface by capillary attrac¬ 
tion, and if this is not arrested in some way at the 
surface, it feeds evaporation night and day, according 
to the dryness of the atmosphere, until all available 
moisture is taken from the soil, or the supply is 
renewed from the clouds. It has been thoroughly 
proved that breaking up the surfaee crust arrests 
capillary action ; hence the best farmei’s start a 
smoothing harrow a day or two after the planting of 
a crop, repeating the process after every rain. Berry 
growers are adopting the same methods, and the more 
advanced cultivate with a many-toothed light culti¬ 
vator, some cultivating in the afternoon what was 
planted in the forenoon. In strawberry planting, 
especially, thei*e is much trampling of the ground, and 
in some rows, at least half the surface will be covered 
with tracks, each track giving free scope to the most 
active capillary pumping. 
In this matter of conserving moisture, there is an¬ 
other source of moistui’e that we often cut off tein- 
poi-arily by wrong methods of preparing or manuring 
the ground. Capillary action is not limited to the 
surface soil, but is in operation as far down as the 
soil reaches, provided the particles of soil are close 
enough to permit its action ; but if we break it off by 
plowing under some coarse substance, or by leaving 
huge air holes between lumps or sods, then we fail to 
get the benefit of this silent ally in pumping up mois¬ 
ture night and day. 
Not long ago, I saw at an institute a practical illus¬ 
tration of how we can paralyze this ally by plowing 
under coai’se manure. A speaker had two panes of 
glass connected by a rim of cambric cemented with 
shellac, so that they were about an inch apart. This 
deep, thin box was filled with fine sand, but about 
half way up, in one of the illustrations, a thin layer 
of chaff had been introduced, separating the lower 
four inches of sand from the upper four inches. The 
two glass boxes were set into a shallow tray of water, 
and in a surprisingly short time, the one filled en¬ 
tirely with sand was wet to the surface, the capillary 
action carrying the water rapidly up. In the other 
case, the water went up to the half inch of chaff and 
stopped, there being no appreciable moisture in the 
sand above the chaff at the close of the meeting, two 
hours after. I have no doubt that the plowing under 
of a heavy coat of strawy manure would operate the 
same way, and I think sevei-al fields in my own circle 
of observation, suffered more sevei*ely fi-om the 
drought from this cause. There are two ways of 
avoiding this evil: one is to put manure on meadows 
the year previous, the other to surface manure in every 
case. Would you manure corn or potato ground in 
this way? some one asks. To this I would reply that 
I am surface manuring ground plowed last fall to be 
planted with berries, and I am but doing as some very 
successful berry growers in my own county have done 
for several seasons. If it is good for strawberries, 
why not for corn ? L. B. fierce. 
