468 
sition, absence of any vice or bad habit, by 
kindness, fairness, regularity of attention, fre¬ 
quent handling, lying in the stall, leading by 
the halter, and the ufc of the separate pen. 
Troublesome tricks are not learned ; Ike calves 
cannot suck one another; will not learn to 
suck or chew harness, rags, etc., etc,; will not 
learn afterwaids to auck then selves arid will 
always be easy to handle and lead. After they 
have reached the age of six months, they will 
know more than many cows and when turned 
out to pasture will go to the business of feed¬ 
ing in a business-like and successful manner. 
For training a calf to lead, a small head stall 
with a ring for a halter should be worn, as the 
neck strap does not give one snffl dent control 
over the young animal. 
The above remarks refer in greater part to 
calves dropped in the Winter, but Summer 
calves may be better raked in a similar man¬ 
ner in eveiy respect, than in any other way, 
excepting perhaps that they may be turned 
into a paddock or Email pasture in the day 
time ; but ibis should not he held to make the 
feeding mentioned unnecessary ; that is re¬ 
quisite in addition to whatever pasture or hay 
or grass may be consumed. When the calf 
reaches the age of 10 to 12 months under this 
treatment it becomes snfli ientiy matured to 
enter the class of breeding heifers. In the case 
of a bull calf precisely the 6aine treatment 
should be adopted, adding to it perhaps a little 
stricter discipline. 
®j}f linesman. 
“THE TOUCH” OR “HANDLING” QUALITY 
OF CATTLE. 
In judging of cattle with reference to their 
quality as beet animals, ocular inspection i6 
useful to a limited extent, but, certain it is, 
that a blind butcher or other expert will make 
a better selection of cattle either for imme¬ 
diate slaughter oi for feeding than one judg¬ 
ing solely by the eye. The hand is deftly 
placed upon ribs and rumpB and passed along 
the loins and the loose fl inks. A gentle pres¬ 
sure is given by the tips of all five fingers in a 
wav to ascertain the softness, pliability, elas¬ 
ticity and mobility of the hide. This is ac¬ 
complished both by the pressure and by a 
Blight thrust given to the fingers, and ascer¬ 
tained by a" sense of knowledge" which is 
begotten by experience. The hand also grasps 
the hide oyer the ribs, taking up a haudful by 
which its thickness is perceived, ana the other 
points of quality confitm d. 
No one with a modicum of experience can 
thus handle a few “beef critters” without ob¬ 
serving notable diff rences in their skins, the 
nnctuousuess of the coats of different animals, 
the softness, thickness, and pliability of their 
hides, and the amount of fat which underlies 
the skin. He will perceive also a difference 
in Ibe coarseness, softness, harshness and 
woolinsss or fnrriness of the hair, and this 
is a disturbing factor in forming a correct 
judgment as to the quality of the beef, until 
one learns to allow for it. 
Health is indicated by the akin being in a 
condition to perform its important function, 
hence it should be soft, flexible and elastic 
and there should be enough of that oily or 
soapy secretion which gives unctuonsness to 
the coat. It should also be free from lumps 
or ridges, and uniform over the fl ;shy parts 
of the body 
-S-^4- 
A Word fob Polled Cattle. —One thing 
seems certain—if we had never seen cattle with 
horns we would not deBire to have them any 
more than we would wish to have horns upon 
our horses. The desire for horns is only a 
matter of habit. Horns are only necessary 
under wild and savage conditions of life, they 
are wholly unnecessary under our conditions 
and civilization. They cause beef to cost 30 
per cent more delivered in Liverpool than it 
should. Carrying deadly weapons is no more 
necessary for our cattle than it is for our¬ 
selves. It leads to a6 bad passions and injuri¬ 
ous habits among cattle as among men. 
D. S. Marvin. 
iusknkji. 
SUCCESS WITH SHEEP. 
I have had pretty good suecees with lambs. 
I use cows’ milk when there are twins, and 
lambB will grow just as well upon this as when 
sucking the ewe, and much better if they do 
not get enough from the latter. I think the 
whole trouble with fed lambs is that too much 
is given them at a time, and that they are not 
fed often enough. I have Invariably found 
that hand-raised lambs will die if not fed 
as late as nine o’clock at night, and as early os 
five in the morning for the first week, and they 
should be fed every three hours through the 
day until three weeks old ; after that age they 
will pretty much take care of themselves, if 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
JULY i6 
feed is plenty. In case of twins, it is much the 
best plan to feed them extra milk, if they do 
not have enough from the ewe, or if one is 
weak. Twin lambs are just about as good as 
single, but they take a little longer to get ready 
for market. I sometimes band-raise a lamb 
for a few days, and Iben if a ewe loses her 
lamb, I give her the hand raised one. I have 
75 lambs out of 82 dropped. Of the seven lost, 
one was aborted ; one so defoimed that we had 
to kill it; one was killed by setting the feed 
trough on it; one by getting hurt in the bars; 
one by drinking coal oil that was left where 
the lamb got to it ; one by caetration; and an¬ 
other from the latter cause or general debility. 
1 have lost one old sheep by disease, one by 
getting its leg broken in the pen, and one was 
killed by dogs. This iB the loss for one year 
on 75 head of sheep and lambs summered and 
wintered, and 82 lambs about ready for market, 
a loss of five lambs too many. 
Mercer Co., N. J. I. J. Blackwell, 
-- 
Sheep Husbandry in Indiana.— Sheep hus¬ 
bandry has been greatly stimulated in the last 
few years; causes fewer dogs, better markets 
for the products and the introduction of better 
breeds. The long-wool mutton breeds are 
most numerous, W. H Ragan. 
Clayton, Ind. 
®|jf loultrj |art). 
NUMBER OF CHICKS TO THE PEN. 
L. 8. HARDIN. 
In raising chicks with brooders and in pens 
the number to be put together is of more 
importance than at first thought would ap¬ 
pear. This is some of ihe knowledge one ac¬ 
quires at considerable cost when he fiist goes 
into the business. I remember a farmer who 
once allowed his hogs to sleep in the hollow 
of an immense sycamore tree. The area was 
limited to accommodate about half a dozen 
hogs, but there was practically no top to the 
pen, and one very cold night the hogs climbed 
on top of each other until the next morning 
when they were found six or eight layerB deep 
with all but the top rows dead from suffoca¬ 
tion. This 6ame danger i6 always to be appre¬ 
hended with chicks in a pen,if allowed to get too 
cold. While young chicks 6how a decidedly 
gregarious instinct, thev have, even when in 
the greatest numbers, no disposition to crowd 
one another. When but a few hours old, if 
put in a warm brooder, each one lies by Itself, 
and if the brooder is full of them, they spread 
out like an immense pan-cake, looking the 
very picture of comfort and contentment ; but 
let the temperature iu the brooder begin to 
fall, and they move up closer and closer to 
one another and begin a peculiarly anxious 
chirping, as if each one was crying with the 
cold. The little ones crawl under and lift up 
thi. larger ones, and they finally get matted 
together in an amazingly solid mass. It is 
under these conditions that the weaker ones 
are certain to be squeezed to death, and even 
the stronger ones, when unfavorably located, 
often succumb. 
For this reason all brooders should be not 
too large, holding never over fifty chicks, and 
they should be artificially heated. If more 
than fifty chicks are in a pen together the 
heat of the brooder is not always utilized by 
them, On the contrary, if the room iB a little 
chilly the chicks are sure to gather in a mass 
outside the brooder, and some of them will be 
crushed. It is very difficult and generally im¬ 
practicable to beep a room constantly heated 
above sixty degrees, and a temperature lower 
than this is sure to bring the little ones to¬ 
gether in dangerous masses if allowed to run 
in large flocks. 
The best plan is to have the brooders about 
two feet square, with one or two sides pro¬ 
tected only by a loose carpet hung uiong them 
so that the chicks cau enter or come out at 
pleasure. A small lamp, properly protected, 
i6 as cheap as anything to heat it. If the 
weather turns warm at night or during one’s 
absence, the chicks come out if the brooder 
proves too warm. If ihey are shut in they 
suff ir greatly, if not fatally, from excess of 
heat. If the brooder is not kept warmed all 
day it Bhould bo heuted before dark, so that 
the cbickB will be comfortable and quiet when 
they first enter. Eight by ten feet is room 
enough for flocks of chicks from thirty to fif¬ 
ty, the right number depending upon their 
Bize—the larger they are the smaller the num¬ 
ber to the pen. While I find the large and 
small chicks agree perfectly, they look better 
when grouped according to size. Knowing 
the fighting proclivities, especially when feed¬ 
ing, of old fowls, I have been amnsed to see 
the good-nature with which a large chick will 
allow a small one to come up and carry off its 
tid-bits. 
Chicks seem to harbor no malice or ill-will 
towards each other. This may, in a great 
measure, be owing to the presence of an abun¬ 
dance of food. The larger chicks are also 
willing to allow the little ones to nestle under 
them, often to the extent of being lifted off 
their feet and tumbled upRide-down. 
Boxes with a bag of feathers banging from 
the top are sufficiently warm without other 
heat for ihe larger chicks iu a room where 
the stove holds fire all night; but with chicks 
under three weeks of age, the cold makes 
them restless and uneasy all night, 60 that 
they do not thrive and they hurt each other 
crowding ugetber. 
Chicks raised by hand are veiy gentle, so 
that a fence tvjp feet high will keep them in, 
especially if they are well fed, so that there is 
no disposition to trespass upon the neighbor¬ 
ing pens. Then if they do fly over Ihe little 
fences, they do no harm and can be easily 
caught and put bank where they belong One 
great trouble I have had in heating brooders 
is to utilize all the heat from the kerosene 
lamps and at the same time to prevent them 
from smoking so badly as to suffocate the 
cbick6. At the end of twelve hours a lamp 
seems to get out of humor, and shows its ill- 
nature by beginning to smoke, when the heat 
from the chimney is allowed to pasB outside, 
there is no danger from this smoke but then 
a large proportion of the heat iB lost. We 
want to save all the heat and get none of the 
smoke. My plau is to let all the heat into the 
brooder; take every precaution lean to pre¬ 
vent the lamp from smoking by keeping the 
brass work* very clean, and then provide 
meaus for the chicks to escape under the car¬ 
pet front if they do get caught in the smoke- 
This they are not very bright at doing, so I 
take the precaution to refill the lamps and 
trim the wicks twice a day, and examine 
everything at least once during the night. In 
trimmiDg lamps I find it better, even with the 
wicks of the oil Btove, to pinch the charred 
wick off rather than to use shears, as then the 
flame burns much more evenly. 
SUCCESS WITH POULTRY WITHOUT 
CAPITAL. 
There is probably no delusion 60 universal 
among suburban people as the idea that any 
one can make a fortune, or at least a fine liv¬ 
ing, with poultry, if he only has sufficient 
capital to Biart the enterprise. Many of them 
have unlimited ideas as to the extent to which 
& poultry farm can be stretched. It is so easy 
to figure out a profit on paper; the chickens 
are so numerous that if one returns a profit, 
of course, the others will, which will soon pile 
up an immense aggregate, 
This delusion has often taken possession of 
men of means, who, following the advice of 
some enthusiast or even of the books on poul¬ 
try-raising, have expended many thousands in 
land, houses and hens, often collecting the lat¬ 
ter by cat-loads and having every thing start 
off with a rush and ending with equal celerity 
and with much dearly bought experience of 
how to fail in poultry raising. If I contem¬ 
plated going into the chicken business on a 
large scale, this is just the way I would not do 
it—capital or no capital. In this business a 
little experience is worth more than any 
amount of money, bo far aB making a pecu¬ 
niary success of the enterprise iB concerned. 
Chickens thrive just as well in a log hut or a 
clapboard shanty as they do in houses glazed 
and Bbiugled, ceiled and wainscoted from top 
to bottom. There is decidedly nothing ae sthetic 
in the ta&te of a hen. The sole point on which 
failure or success in this business depends is 
the adaptability of the man to the occu¬ 
pation, and where this is lacking no 
amount of the conveniences that money can 
furnish will supply the want, Experience is 
of paramount importance, but like most kinds 
of effective medicine, the bitter part of it 
should be taken in small doses—too much of 
this sort at one time is apt to irritate the com¬ 
plaint it was intended to cure. Many a man 
has become heart-sick and abandoned the 
business on account of the troubles or failures 
that crowded upon him when he was too fresh 
in the business to know how to meet them on 
so large a scale, when, bad he started in a 
modest way and gathered experience aB he 
weut along, the result would have been quite 
different. 
My advice would invariably be to start on 
a small scale and let the business grow 
only as its legitimate demands may require. A 
few hens and an old shed will do for a start. 
If one is willing to stick to ibe.ro, feed them 
and coddle them, watch their every movement 
until one becomes familiar with their peculiar¬ 
ities, their wants, iheir likes and their dis¬ 
likes, their good habile and iheir bad ones, he 
will then be sufficiently posted to lake com¬ 
mand of a larger battalion. If then he sickens 
and tires—as he probably will—of the eternal 
wony of these restlesB creatures, when he 
gives them up the loss will not be so great nor 
the mortification of failure so conspicuous. By 
all means stick to a few until the hen-fever 
part of the passion for fowls is over. Not 
only should one confine his efforts to a few, 
but these should be common native fowls, for 
the simple reason that one knows not at first 
what branch of the business, if any, he may 
ultimately decide to follow. It is next to im¬ 
possible to follow them all; no place i6 adapt¬ 
ed to all on a large scale. We raise chickens 
for eggs, capons, fat fowls and broilers. Any 
one of tbese branches properly followed, will 
occupy llie whole, lime ol any one man. Which 
branch his taste will ultimately settle upon no 
one can tell until he tries. Therefore do I 
repeat—start with a few; have patience to 
work up by degrees, for without this virtue 
success need not be hoped for. 
Then the habit of buying whatever you may 
think you need is a great mistake. No matter 
how much you may think you need a thing, 
the chances are a dozen to one that, if you 
will only wait, you will find you cau get along 
without it. or some device will suggest, itself 
to your mind by which the same end may be 
compassed without the outlay of money. L 'urn 
to trade for what you wunt, be that fowlR or 
furniture. If glass is needed, get second-hand 
sash from hot-bed or window—that from either 
will last a life-time. Do not be in a hurry to 
buy feed at wholesale rates. There is always 
greater waste when feeding from a large sup¬ 
ply ihan from a small one, probably enough to 
make up the difference between the rate of 
cost of each lot of feed- Husband your re¬ 
sources and try to make the profits grow out 
of your investment. Above all, keep strict 
accounts and have as little estimating aoout 
the business as possible. In my opinion the 
chicken business will pay ; but only in the 
bandB of the man who is not ashamed or 
afraid to build it up from a small beginning. 
CHICKEN CHOLERA. 
It is highly probable that cholera in fowls 
originates by contagion aud is introduced into 
fl icks either by newly acquired infected fowls, 
by infected manure or feathers, or sometimes 
by the bodies of dead birds brought into, or 
near the poultry yard by dogs or other animals. 
In most cases the disease can be traced to the 
first-mentioned source. As the viras remains 
in a fixed form it is not probable that the dis¬ 
ease germs are taken up by the air but that 
they are taken into the body with food and 
other matter which has been contaminated. 
Preventive measures, in this disease as, in¬ 
deed, in most others when the causes aud 
mode of propagation are known, are the safest 
resort. Where a flock of fowls is already in¬ 
fected, the first and most reliable symptom is 
the coloration of the kidney excretion which 
is voided by fowl? with the offal. This, in 
health, iB readily distinguished by its white 
appearance, but when the fowl is attacked by 
cholera this kidney excrement changes its color 
from white to pale, and then to deep yellow, 
and in extreme cases it becomes green. At 
about this stage an obstinate diarrhea i sets in. 
This symptom being discovered, the infected 
fowls should be at once killed, care being taken 
that no blood is left where the other fowls may 
get at it, and the bodies should be buried. The 
healthy birds Bhould be removed to a clean 
piece of ground which is known to hi free 
from the contagion, and the excrement of these 
fowls should be inspected daily to ascertain 
their condition, aud to detect the sick bird j. 
If the fowls can be separated into pens of three 
or four Bucb detection will be hastened. Be¬ 
fore placing the birds in new quarters it is 
well to fumigate them with sulphur, as the 
feathers are apt to convey the disease. 
In case fowls aie introduced from other lo¬ 
calities where the disease has been raging, it is 
good policy to “ quarantine" them, so to 
Bpeak, for three weeks or bo uutil they are 
known to be free from the disease. Any eggs 
brought from other places for hatching should 
be cleaned of any excrement which may be at¬ 
tached to them, uud manure from infected yards 
should not be thrown upon land to which 
healthy fowls have access. By observing these 
precautions the disease may be excluded or ex¬ 
terminated. (lures have been effected by feed¬ 
ing cooked meal, red pepper, gunpowder aud 
turpentine mixed together ; also by placiug 
water in which bi-sulphate of soda, in propor¬ 
tion of an ounce to a gallon, has been dissolved, 
where the fowls can drink it. 
f()f ^juaruui. 
MARKETING HONEY. 
It is discouraging, to say the least, for a bee 
keeper to find that for some reason or other hi» 
honey does not bring as much in market as 
some one else's. After the great care he has 
exercised in win teringhis bees, in separating and 
hiving them, or in removing them, perhaps, to 
the vicinity of groves of flowering trees so that 
he may reap the profits which his faithful 
workers will surely enable him to do, oilier 
things being favorable, he is liable to complain 
if the profits are not realized. But has he used 
care in marketing liis honey crop ? Sometimes 
a negative reply to this question will throw 
some light on his failure. Anything brought 
to a city market, be it fruit, flower or vegeta¬ 
ble, will command a better price when neatly 
