field. Again, to plow pasture lands, the herd 
must be reduced to meet the necessities of 
the case. This is also an objection*] feature, 
and one that is always distasteful to the 
dairymen. When grass Utterly fails, plowing 
and re-seeding, should be resorted to, but 
generally pasture lands may be kept per¬ 
manently in grass by giving them a little 
extra care and attention. If they begin to 
fail from over cropping or neglect, a judicious 
course of top-dressing and sowing seed will 
be found preferable to the plow. 
Usually on the black slate lands of Herki¬ 
mer, plaster at the rate of one hundred to cwo 
hundred pounds to the acre, every alternate 
year, will keep pasture lands in good con¬ 
dition. 1 have found great benefit from the 
use of ashes in connection with plaster at the 
rate of two or three barrels per acre. Well 
decomposed horse manure, hauled out in the 
fall, broken up fine, and applied when the 
cows are in after-feed, has produced good 
results. 1 have no doubt but that all pasture 
lands In the dairy region would be greatly 
benefited by the use of bones, as this material 
is taken largely from the soil. The quantity 
of phosphates that have been removed from 
soils long employed in dairying must be very 
large. When in Europe in 1SC6 I had an 
interview with Prof. Voelcker who hae made 
so many analyses of milk. In his laboratory 
the different constituents in a gallon of milk 
are separated in bottles. One bottle contains 
the oil, another the casein, another the phos¬ 
phates, another the milk, sugar, &c. The 
quantity of phosphates in a gallon of milk is 
by no means infinitesimal, but if placed in the 
hand would surprise most dairy farmers on 
account of its bulk. If we consider for a 
moment the large number of such handsful 
that are taken from dairy pastures every 
year and never returned, and in addition the 
bone material required in the young calf, it 
must be evident that some soils at least are 
deteriorating in this element. 
The doctor remarked, while showing the 
bottle containing the phosphates, that they 
were really the manure upon which the finer 
and more nutritious grasses feed, and that 
the best results nearly always follow from 
their application upon old dairy farms. 
There is an immense waste of bones in 
America, in England, they are husbanded 
and imported from America and other coun¬ 
tries and largely used. The views of Dr. 
Voelcker correspond with my own observa¬ 
tion and experience in regard to old pastures 
if properly kepL up in fertility, being su¬ 
perior for milk to newly cultivated grounds. 
In seeding it may be remarked that the 
quantity of seeds usually employed is much 
too light. When 1 first began seeding mead¬ 
ows with clover and timothy, 1 used about 
four quarts of timothy seed ; but I found 
that one-half a bushel or more gave better 
results. In Otsego County I once saw a 
meadow of orchard gras3 which had yielded 
for several years at the rate of four tons to 
the acre, and it had been seeded at the rate 
of two and a half bushels seed to the acre. 
I regard orchard grass as one of the most 
valuable grasses, whether for pasture or 
meadow. It springs up very early in the 
season, and affords a good bite several days 
earlier than most other grasses, If meadows 
are to be seeded for hay that is to be market¬ 
ed in the city, the variety most popular or 
which will bring the best price is timothy, 
but for horned cattle, finer grasses are more 
relished. The bunch grass, the Mesquit and 
Buffalo grass of the greut western plains, are 
exceedingly fine and are very nutritious. 
These grasses have never been tried at the 
East, but 1 see no reason why they would not 
succeed v, ell here. 
ing and re-seeding ? andjiually, what are the 
cheapest as well as the best modes of obtain¬ 
ing quality and productiveness of pasturage ? 
in considering these questions it should be 
borne in mind that the subject has reference 
to pastures for the production of milk, or 
those adapted to the dairy. Soils vary in 
character, and when under the modifying 
influence of climate and location, exhibit a 
peculiar fitness for certain plants ; thus we 
have those best adapted to the production of 
grain, grass, fruit, or for those abounding in 
textile fiber. Now what are we to do with 
oasture lands that begin to fail from over¬ 
cropping, or from other causes ? Shall we 
plow them up and re-ssed, or shall we adopt 
some other mode of renovation ? 
I know of pastures that have been in grass 
for .sixty years and upward, and to day show 
uo signs of failure. Wherever I have been 
through the dairy region I find these pastures, 
and it is the universal testimony of those who 
have them, that they arc yielding better 
returns in rnilk than any recently re-seeded 
grounds. I have seen old pastures plowed, re¬ 
seeded and put in meadow, where the annual 
crop for a few years was large, bat when put 
back again in pasture gave poor returns, and 
took years to obtain a nice, thick sod. This 
may not always be the case, but it is frequent 
and I am inclined to think general. It may 
be said that the fault lay in re-seeding; that 
a greater variety of seed should lutvj been 
sown, timothy, the clovers, orchard grass, 
blue gross, red-top, &c. Our farmers gene¬ 
rally, I believe, seed mostly with timothy, 
clover and red top, using the ground at first 
for meadows, and afterward for pastures. 
What we want (and it is usually that which 
obtains in old pastures) is a variety of grasses 
springing up in succession, and those that 
will bear cropping so that they will afford a 
good fresh bite from May till November. 
Old pastures are generally filled with a variety 
of plants that are adapted to the soil, and in 
plowing and taking off grain crops, and then 
re-seeding, the conditions or elements of fer¬ 
tility arc somewhat changed, so that antici¬ 
pated results are not always obtained. 
I have visited many stock farms where 
men make a business of buying cattle and 
fattening them for the market, and they say 
to me that they have never been able to fat¬ 
ten stock with that facility on grass raised 
on ne ivly-seeded grounds as on that of those 
put down many years ago, or from pastures 
that have never been broken up at all. 
Others make similiar statements. I shall not 
dispute the point that we may doctor up our 
lands to produce any desired crop, but to do 
so is expensive and will often require more 
science and skill than are common in this 
country. When nature furnishes the con¬ 
ditions for producing grasses that give the 
best results in milk, and when these grasses 
become firmly established in the soil, are we 
not pursuing a suicidal policy in destroying 
them by over-cropping, or by allowing weeds 
to smother and crowd them from the soil, 
under the impression that our pastures can 
be renewed at any time by plowing and re¬ 
seeding ( Would it not be better and cheaper 
to exterminate weeds and give our pastures 
some rest during the hot, dry weather of 
July and August by feeding sowed corn 
instead of cropping down to the roots, and 
allowing the sun to roast them out and des¬ 
troy the plants ? It is the weeds, and over- 
cropping and unprotected covering of pasture 
lands in hot weather that are the fruitful 
sources of failure of grass in pastures. 
Generali}' on rich soils like those of Herki¬ 
mer, N, Y., the old daily pastures need but 
little if any organic matter ; the decay of 
roots and the droppings of stock supply this 
matter in abundance, and hence the applica¬ 
tion of cheap mineral manures is that which 
is most needed. These, of course, can be 
readily supplied, but if wo are to plow up 
and take off grain crops bam yard manures 
must be used, which are more expensive. It 
is very unprofitable for the dairyman to 
break up lands that are yielding, or can be 
made to yield readily, good crops of grass. 
Our most successful dairymen in the Eastern 
and Middle States believe that grain can lie 
purchased from abroad cheaper than they 
can raise it. Grain raising, therefore, with 
many is considered a matter of necessity 
rather than choice, but grass fails and the 
land is plowed and re-seeded. This may be 
well enough for meadows, but it is uot so 
conveniently managed in pastures. If apart 
of the pasture land begins to fail and it is 
designed to plow and re-seed, the land must 
be fenced, which is expensive and often in¬ 
convenient. But after getting it down to 
grass, cattle can not be turned iu until the 
plants become somewhat established, as they 
tread up the ground, pull up the grass by the 
roots, and by midsummer there is a barren 
CHICKEN CHOLERA 
GRAS8 MANAGEMENT 
As 1 see different queries answered in the 
Rural New Yorker, I wish to know if you 
car. give me a remedy for what is known as 
ChicKen Cholera here at the South. The 
symptoms are a dumpiness and soft dis¬ 
charges of greenish yellow, apparent high 
fever and hard breathing. The fowls at¬ 
tacked sit in one position with their bills 
touching the ground, and 90 per cent, of 
those attacked die. It has become such a 
scourge among poultry that it is almost use¬ 
less to try mid raise them. I see no mention 
in your paper (of which 1 am a subscriber) 
of such a disease among the poultry at the 
North, and would be truly glad if you could 
give me a remedy that would cure it. I have 
tried calomel and oil and, in fact, a countless 
number of remedies, and none do any good. 
Subscriber, Baldoc.k, 8. C. 
In response to our correspondent, we can 
only compile from article* heretofore pub¬ 
lished in the Rural New-Yorker some of 
the remedies said to have proved effective. 
Mr. H. Hales of New Jersey claims to have 
had perfect success with such birds as he 
treated (in time) in the following manner: 
He placed the ailing birds in boxes on clean 
straw and cut away such feathers as had 
become soiled by their evacuations, and as a 
means of sustaining life fed them twice a 
day with oat meal gruel, into which was put 
some finely chopped rue. This, of course, 
had to be poured down the throats of the 
sick birds. In addition, he sprinkled carbolic 
powder upon the straw in the boxes where 
the fowls were placed, dusted some into their 
feathers and gave them a Uuispoonful or two 
of water slightly impregnated with carbolic 
acid, which can be obtained of any druggist. 
The ailing fowls were kept upart from those 
in, health, and after the administration of 
this remedy recovered rapidly. He treated 
two or three dozen in this way and thinks 
he should have lost all of them had they not 
been so treated. 
A “Young Farm Matron,” who had about 
100 fowls, half of which died ere she discov¬ 
ered any remedy, sayB she fed bran mash, in 
which was a liberal dose of the common gar¬ 
den pepper—feeding every other day for two 
weeks, and has had no more loss from chick¬ 
en cholera. She says, “ Whenever I see a 
chicken appear droopy, I give it a dose of 
pepper and all is well.” 
Another writer says :—“ To one gallon of 
sour milk add a tablespoonful of alum, set 
it in shallow vessels where the chickens can 
drink as often as they choose. We have used 
it three years and none of our chickens die 
of cholera when we attend to it in time.” 
What is known as “ Wright’s remedy” is 
found effectual, by “A Young Amateur,” in 
almost every case :—Give every three hours 
five grains of rhubarb, two grains of Cay¬ 
enne pepper and ten drops of laudanum. 
Our correspondent says he gives midway be¬ 
tween every two doses of the above, a tea¬ 
spoonful of brandy in about the same (or less) 
amount of water, with five drops of MoDou- 
gol’s Fluid Curbolate. in such dose, and has 
saved the bulk of his chickens attacked since 
he began its use. 
Mrs. E. R. wriscs that she cured her chick¬ 
ens of cholera by taking a lump of alum as 
large as a hen’s egg and dissolved it in a half 
gallon of water. This she thickened with 
corn meal and gave it to her fowls three 
times a day. Saved her chicks by this means. 
Other remedies have been given in the 
Rural New-Yorker, but we have space for 
no more at this time. 
At the Central New York Fair at Utica, 
recently there was a farmers’ discussion of 
“Grasses, Meadows and Pasture,” which 
was introduced by X. A. Willard of the 
Rural New-Yorker. From his remarks we 
make the following extracts : 
What we fanners are most interested in, I 
suppose, Is the varieties of grass best adapted 
to our use, and in what manner they may be 
most successfully grown. The grass family 
is very numerous, embracing several hundred 
varieties, and yet the ordinary farmer is 
familiar with only a few kinds. The grasses 
are, so to speak, social iu their character and 
thrive well when different kinds are grown 
together in the same sod. The practical 
farmer then, should understand this fact and 
take advantage of it, If he is seeking for the 
largest product, for it is well known that 
individual plants of tho same species will not 
grow close to each other for any length of 
time; for however thickly planted from 
seed, in one or two seasons intermediate 
plants decay and leave vacant spaces which 
are soon filled up with spurious grasses, 
weeds, or moss ; hut when a variety of 
different species adapted to the soil are mixed 
together, they grow close, form a dense bot¬ 
tom and continue permanent. 
In seeding for pastures, a somewhat 
different order of seeds should be used than 
for meadows. In pastures, we seek to have 
those varieties that spring up in succession, 
so that a good, fresh bite may be had from 
spring to fall. For meadows, on the other 
hand, we seek plants that will come to ma¬ 
turity about the same time, otherwise a por¬ 
tion of the plants are cut too early or too late, 
and thus loss is entailed. For pastures, 
orchard grass, Jutie grass, meadow fescue, 
meadow foxtail, sweet-scented vernal, peren 
nial rye grass, timothy, red top, perennial 
clover, blue or wire grass (poa compressu), 
rough-stalked meadow and white clover will 
give a good succession, and if sown in liberal 
quantity will make a thick sod of sweet and 
nutritious herbage. 
But I have a word here to say about old 
pastures. In the first place, many pastures 
are habitually overstocked. By this practice 
the roots of grasses and the whole plants are 
kept so small that their growth is feeble, 
and not one-half the feed is afforded that the 
land would produce if stocked lightly a year 
or two, and the grass allowed to get a good 
thrifty start. But this is uot the only disad¬ 
vantage from overstocking. The feeble 
growth of the grasses allows other plants to 
creep in, and the ground soon becomes over¬ 
run with weeds, which, on account of their 
not being cropped by stock, grow in great 
luxuriance, maturing their seed, and thus 
impoverishing the soil. 
The curse of American dairying to-day is 
weeds. Whenever tliey get full possession 
they become so formidable that the farmer 
is often disheartened, and gives up their 
eradication. Many farmers, too, have an 
erroneous notion in regard to the destruction 
of weeds on grass lands. The impression 
often prevails that the only way of getting 
rid of weeds, is to break up and thoroughly 
cultivate the ground in hoed crops, This is 
not always convenient, or even desirable, for, 
in many cases on dairy farms, it can uot be 
done without breaking up the herd or dairy, 
while some uneven surfaces can not be 
plowed. There is another way of killing 
weeds, such as the daisy and that class of 
plants, by the liberal use of manures and 
glass seeds. 1 have eradicated white daisy, 
in several instances, by simply applying 
farm-yard manure and gypsum, and strew¬ 
ing the ground with a heavy seeding of 
clover. Establish your clover upon the soil, 
and feed it uutil it is luxuriant, and it de¬ 
stroys the daisy and other weeds by a system 
of plant-garroting—strangling it and choking 
the life out of them. Then some weeds may 
be killed by frequent cutting, and not allow¬ 
ing them to seed. It is always advisable to 
pull up or exterminate bad weeds on their 
first appearance in pastures, and not allow 
them to spread. 
The subject of pastures is of great import¬ 
ance to the daily interest. To know how to 
produce milk cheaply aud of the best quality 
is the underlying stone of the dairyman’s 
success. The points to be determined it 
seems to me are these :—What kind of pas¬ 
tures are best fer the dairy ? Are they those 
which have been long in grass, or are they 
those which have been recently plowed and 
re-seeded ? Gan pastures be kept productive 
when remaining long in grass ? or in begin¬ 
ning to fail is it necessary to renew by plow¬ 
POULTRY NOTES 
Warts on Chickens .—Correspondents of 
Our Home Journal give the following reme¬ 
dies :—“ Dissolva blue stone in water, cut the 
wart off, and with the knife scrape out all 
of the seed that cau be taken out, then with 
a inop apply the liquid blue stone. If taken 
when the wart first appears, the above rem¬ 
edy will make a cure. Use as often as needed, 
as'more than one application may be neces¬ 
sary.” Another is “ Rub carbolic acid 
freely on the warts of his chickens, about 
twice. Use clear, purified carbolic acid, and 
unless his warts are different from the Texas 
style, they will not wait to make a 1 state¬ 
ment.’ ” 
Incubators .—“A New Reader,” Newark, 
N. J.. is informed that the volume of the 
Rural Nkw-Yokkbr containing its issues 
from January 1 to July 1, 1*74, contains this 
infomiatiou ne asks for—especially the issue 
of June 20. The volume can be had at this 
office at $2.50, bound. Previous volumes also 
embrace much of such information. 
Setting Urns in the Fall.— (R. C.)—It is 
never “ too late” to set hens provided you 
take care of the chickens-—that is, have a 
warm place for the hen while setting, and 
also for the hen and chickens after they are 
hatched. 
FIELD NOTES, 
Sow only Plump Seed. —(T. W. R.) It does 
not pay to buy shrunken wheat or seed grain 
of any kind to sow. If you buy seed wheat, 
insist’ upon perfect kernels—the larger and 
plumper the better, since this is essential to 
the health of the plant. Shrunken or shriv¬ 
eled seed may germinate, but the absence of 
a sufficient quantity of starch to supply nu¬ 
trition for its early development, may cause 
it to perish before it takes root in the soil. 
To Keep Sweet Potatoes.—A correspond¬ 
ent of the Cincinnati Gazette says :—“ Pro¬ 
cure dry forest leaves ; place iu a barrel or 
box a layer of loaves, then a layer of pota¬ 
toes, and so on. Last fall I wrapped some 
of the linear in paper before placing them in 
the leaves, and these were found in the 
spring to be more perfectly preserved than 
those thatwerenot thus enveloped, although 
all kept well.” 
Odessa Wheat in Wis .—A correspondent 
of the Western Rural says that in Waupaca, 
Portage and Waahara Counties Wis., it is 
with very few exceptions a failure and 
almost abandoned. Its faults arc, it is the 
latest wheat and suffers more from Chinch 
bugs than others j it rusts badly ; it ripens 
unevenly. 
