560 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
AUS 22 
fastidiously clean as the sheep, or more dainty 
in its eating. 
While we give these directions to “help out” 
any one who may be caught with a stock of 
pregnant ewes on hand, and-no roots or other 
gi’een food for them, we would most strongly 
advise every one to let winter lamb raising 
alone, unless they have nn abundance of some 
sort of succulent food provided for. 
Whether winter lambs can be made to pay 
at the prices named, depends- entirely upon 
the feeder and his manner of attending to 
the sheep. We could under those circcum- 
stances, make such a profit as would astonish 
any grain-raising farmer. But to any one 
who has never tried raising winter lambs, 
our advice would be: Commence with only a 
few; study these notes carefully; ask as many 
questions as needed, and keep doing so, keep¬ 
ing “both” eyes open and jour “wits” at work. 
There is certainly money in it for those who 
do it rightly. 
HOW TO WATER 
is a very important thing to know. Contrary 
to the common opinion, sheep do want water; 
plenty of water; pure water, and should have 
it always accessible. We have seen sheep 
compelled to get wbat moisture they must 
have for an imperfect digestion, by eatiDg 
snow. We have seen others obliged to go 
some distance to some brook or pond, and get 
down on their knees aud drink out of a hole 
in the ice. so deep that occasionally one would 
slip in and he drowned; others we have seen 
obliged to drink from the cattle trough placed 
so high that the sheep were obliged to stand 
on their hind feet, and rest their necks so hard 
on the edge of the troughs, in order to reach 
the water, that they eould only sip a mouth¬ 
ful at a time, being obliged to get down to 
swallow. Of course, all these methods, bad 
enough for ordinary store sheep, would be dis¬ 
astrous with breeding ewea We have some¬ 
times used tubs for watering, made of the 
halves of fish barx-els sawed through the mid¬ 
dle: at other times tobacco pails well painted, 
being first thoroughly soaked iu oil; but both 
these are much too small, and bold such a lim¬ 
ited quantity that, with the best of care, the 
sheep do not receive half as much as they 
need, and are often entirely without a supply 
for hours. The troughs we use, aud which, 
after much experience, we call the best, are 
six feet long, eight inches wide and six inches 
deep, inside measurement, and are made of 
two-inch pine planks, though any other wood 
would be as good. These rest on the fiat side 
of a 2x4 cross piece, 15 inches long. They are 
filled from the system of water pipes, which we 
have before described. They are examined 
every day, and are kept entirely clean, being 
emptied, scrubbed sud refilled if the least 
filth happens to get into one of them. To see 
a sheep going to a trough three or four times 
during a single meal, sipping only a few 
swallows each time, should convince the most 
skeptical that sheep do ueed w-ater. 
LAMBING 
should begin in the last two weeks of Decem¬ 
ber, if the sheep were coupled as soon as July 
20 , and this is the most critical and important 
period iu the whole business. It is now that 
the good shepherd iscoustantiu his attentions, 
ever on the alert aud ready to render assist¬ 
ance, still never needlessly disturbing or an¬ 
noying the sheep. At this period we like to 
baveaman in the barns from five in the morn¬ 
ing until nine at night; and the ewes should 
be seen at least once in the night. 
If they have been properly fed, they will 
now be in fiue health and strength, gaining 
finely, and it daily fed with roots or silage, 
will be neither feverish nor constipated, and 
but little likely t.o ueed assistance. The shep¬ 
herd, however, should have a constant watch 
over every ewe likely to drop a lamb withiu a 
week, and if he fears trouble from a too 
early or abundant flow of milk, it is much 
better to iniik the ewe for a day or two than 
to have an inflamed or caked udder. W ith 
the above care, very lew will reed any assist¬ 
ance at the critical time; and this should 
never be given unless absolutely essential, but 
when needed it should be given gently, but 
promptly. 
THE LAMBS, 
will come strong and healthy, if the ewes 
have been properly fed, and it will rarely 
happen that one will need any help; but it is 
well to have an eyo on every new-comer. It 
should be up and looking for its dinner within 
half au hour after being dropped, or the 
shepherd should promptly know the cause. 
Of course, w here the sheep are kept in barns 
(and we are supposing all to be so kept), there 
will be no danger of its being chilled, and 
some other cause should be sought as the 
reason for its tardiness; but whatever it may 
be, it should at once be removed and the little 
fellow assisted in getting a taste of its 
mother’s milk. After the lamb has got upon 
its feet and has once succeeded, of itself, 
in sucking a little milk, the only care it will | 
need will be to see that both the ewe’s teats 
are unobstructed. It will sometimes happen 
(but rarely, however,) that the first feces 
will be thick and glutinous, and w-ill so adhere 
to the surrounding wool so as to prevent all 
passage from the bowels; in this case, they 
should be carefully removed and the parts 
washed with warm water, rubbed dry and 
oiled with a little lard or castor oil,which will 
usually end the trouble. Borne shepherds, 
in these cases, give a teaspoonful of castor oil 
in new milk; but we do not believe in dosing 
sheep or men when some other meaus will be 
equally effectual, and the above treatment 
seldom fails. 
When lambs begin to come in numbers, an 
empty pen should be provided, which may 
be easily done by vacating one that has pur¬ 
posely been previously occupied by dry 
ewes or other sheep, and as soon as the 
mother has become attached to her lamb and 
it has got able to follow her and help itself to 
its dinner, they should be removed to it, and 
when 20 ewes and their lambs have been put 
into it, another pen should be vacated and till¬ 
ed, This causes each pen of lambs to be of very 
nearly the same age and size, which is very 
desirable, for in this condition they will do 
better than when old and young are mixed 
together, with the inevitable result of the old¬ 
er and stronger running over the yooDger 
ones. When all are of the same size and age 
they learn to eat together, they grow up very 
uniform in size, and nearly all attain the 
weight and degree of fatness suitable for mar¬ 
ket at about the same time. 
(Tl )t 
WHERE TO RAISE FUTURE HERDS. 
E. WARING. 
Our Western aud Southern cattlemen have 
been permitted to pursue their own way so 
long, and have become so rich and powerful 
as to bid defiance even to the Government. 
But from present appearances it is likely that 
the rightful settlers and the much wronged 
Indians will be protected in their lands and 
rights, and that these usurpers must obey the 
laws aud seek “new pastures.” Stock raising 
is a profitable business anywhere, but the 
storms and rigor of the Northwest country 
have caused much suffering and loss of cattle, 
especially during the last Winter. Many 
thousands perished from thirst, hunger and 
cold, and it was appalling to the humane 
stockmen to see groups of hundreds shivering 
and with humped-up backs seeking the shelter 
(?) afforded by the barbed wire fences. And 
for miles along these fence lines thousands of 
dead carcasses of what were once sleek cattle 
—now reduced to mere frames—were strewn, 
a total loss. I could not but compare the 
condition of these vast herds exposed to all 
the inclemency of a Northwestern Winter, 
with that of my own, sheltered in a warm, 
well-ventilated, Pennsylvania barn, with 
every necessary attention paid to their wants; 
with troughs full of tempered water always 
accessible, sweet clover-hay furnished at reg¬ 
ular intervale, a supply of good corn silage in 
silo, and steamed or cooked feed for extremely 
cold weather. 
In cooking the feed 1 use a large, horizon¬ 
tal, molasses hogshead, 126 gallons capacity, 
revolving on a perforated steam pipe, which 
passes through the center, forming the axis, 
driven by a belt passing around the hogshead 
and to the engine shaft. The hogshead has 
on its side a strongly hinged trap-door and 
clasp for shutting tight while cooking. To 
till it, the door side is turned up to receive 
the cut stalks, meals (oil and corn), or whole 
grain, from the cutting room above, and 
when these are cooked the door side is turned 
down, the clasp or hasp knocked open aud the 
contents deposited in the feeding entry, send¬ 
ing a sweet perfume throughout the whole 
stables, aud any animal that taiJs to join with 
a “moo, moo” in pleading fora taste, needs its 
digestive machinery looked after. The con¬ 
trast between such treatment and the improv¬ 
ident way in which the herds of the Plains 
are treated is the difference between profit 
and loss. 
To raise grass-fed cattle successfully and 
with the greatest profit, we must keep them 
always improving, not losing in two mouths 
what, they have gained in six. In order to 
accomplish this, we must look to the vast un¬ 
developed natural fields so well supplied with 
water and nutritious pastures, susceptible to 
great improvement 1 admit, but enjoying au 
immunity from storms and cold aud more 
accessible to markets. 1 refer, in the order of 
preference, to the Blue Ridge section of North 
Carolina, Western Tennessee and parts of 
Alabama and Mississippi, where stock can be 
wintered with only one to two months'feeding, 
and that only at intervals during the severest 
weather. Hundreds of thousands of acres 
admirably adapted to this business are almost 
idle in these sections. Rural readers can we 
not co-operate and develop this great enter¬ 
prise east of the Mississippi? The stock 
raiser has a bright prospect before him in that 
region, even in raising for home consumption. 
(l!)c Sxmtic-ljcri). 
PIG PORTRAITS. 
COL. F. D. CURTIS. 
Too much fuss has been made about pigs’ 
snouts. A great deal of money has been lost 
on this account. I lost considerable before I 
had the sense to see a pig’s snout in its true 
light, Au inch or so on the end of its nose is 
a very small part of a pig; and as the pig 
is not a sensitive being, its feelings are not. 
hurt by the s'ze of its snout, and others of its 
species do not care anything about it. There 
is, however, a great deal of philosophy in 
pigs’ suouts, and the wonder to me is that 1 
did not see it before. Years ago I actually 
offered Captain Pratt, of the old ship, the 
Cultivator, 675 for an imported pig because it 
bad an aristocratic nose and a good coat of 
hair. Captain Pratt refused my offer, as his 
price was 6100. The next dBy I went back to 
give him the 6100, and the pig bad been ship¬ 
ped to Illinois. I then bad a taste of “sour 
grapes,” aud the attack terminated in a wise 
conclusion that pug-nosed pigs were a delu¬ 
sion and a suare. 
Now for the philosophyA stub nosed 
pig, is a chubby one. It is also an inactive 
animal. It is inclined too much to fat. It has 
little growth. It doesn’t amount to much. 
There is a law that extremities are balanced 
or somewhat equalized. A pig with a longer 
nose will have a longer body, more raugeand 
growth. Growth is what we want in hogs. 
There may be a great deal of satisfaction to 
some folks to look at pigs’portraits and admire 
a sbortnose, with overgrown cheeks, aud eyes 
out of sight; but I confess I like to see a clean- 
cut head, with a body indicating some muscle 
and expansion. These fashionable hogs are 
helpless things, and must be fed and waited 
on like babies. The form is unnatural. They 
are poor breeders. Chunkiness in action and 
stupidity are not good qualities for breeding. 
The pigs will be few, weak aud small, and the 
sows make lazy and unprofitable mothers. 
The short-nose fancy reached the climax iu 
Suffolks, and lias about rim them out. The 
Essex breeders caught it badly, and so did the 
Berkshire breeders, aud a dozen years ago, 
the best specimens of this most excellent 
breed were sacrificed to fashionable folly. 
The Essex got a bad set-back as the little 
rolly-poly chunks were mere babies, and pork 
makers found there was no money in them. 
Before this day of folly, I had a Berkshire 
boar bred by Wm. Crozier, which dressed over 
600 pounds. Such Berksliires paid, and hogs 
like them will pay. 
fwlfc Crops. 
RAISING CLOVER SEED. 
ITS IMPORTANCE. 
Where the clover midge doth not abound, 
the growing of clover seed can be made to 
work very nicely into a good system of crop 
rotation. It is a mistaken notion of many 
that this is a very exhausting crop, for such 
is not the fact; on the contrary, properly 
handled, it is among the renovating ones. 
Men raise from 12 to 80 bushels of beaus per 
acre and follow this with wheat, without so 
much as thinking whether it is hard on the 
land or not, and yet each bushel of beans re¬ 
moves from the soil about the same constitu¬ 
ents as a bushel of clover-seed; and with the 
beans nothing is left in tbe soil, even the roots 
being removed. On the other hand, the 
clover roots left in the soil weigh a good 
many tons per acre, and contain a large 
amount of nitrogen as well as a large amount 
of potash and phosphoric acid—all elements 
very essential to the welfare of the wheat 
plants or of almost any cereal plant. 
how to raise a large crop, 
though seemingly a very simple thing, is yet 
very imperfectly understood, and often 
times a large share of the seed is immature 
when cut, and therefore of no use. W here the 
Mammoth Red or Pea-vine is grown, the seed 
is produced only from the first crop; but it 
must not be left to grow for seed from 
early spring time, as in sue!/ a case it makes 
too rank a growth and does not seed as well as 
the latei growth. The best yield is obtained 
by pasturing it closely until (in the latitude 
of Central Now York) about the first of June; 
then, if there are any spots in the field where 
the clover is not eaten dowu, a mower should 
be run over them. The cut clover can be used 
for soiling, or it may be, with some trouble, 
cured for hay, making very good feed. After 
this time the clover should be left undisturbed 
until the time for euttiug. 
With the Medium Red the seed is always 
grown from the second crop. Why the second 
crop of this and the later growth of the Mam¬ 
moth produce seed so much more abundantly, 
is supposed to be owing to the greater abun¬ 
dance of bumble bees later in the season, the 
belief being common that their presence is 
necessary to carry pollen from one flower to 
another, thus fertilizing the blossoms by a 
greater distribution of pollen. When it is 
designed to use the Becond crop for seed, Me¬ 
dium Clover should be mowed as soon as in 
full bloom, not waiting for the appearance of 
a single brown head. I have always found 
the earliest-cut fields to produce very much 
the largest crop and the best quality of seed. 
It is a good plan with either kind of clover, 
on most soils, aud where it can be obtained at 
moderate figures, to sow- from one to two 
bushels of plaster per acre very soon after 
mowing or ceasing to pasture, and it should be 
sown in the early morning or when the 
ground is wet with raiu. 
WHEN TO GUT AND HOW TO CURE 
are questions on which the grower should be 
well posted, as if cut too soon, much of the 
seed will he immature, aud if allowed to stand 
too long, much will be shelled off and wasted. 
Some seasons, clover produces a crop and 
seems to ripen up until, when fit to cut, not a 
“red head” would be seen; in others, particu¬ 
larly if quite wet, it will keep growing and 
blossoming until very late, and in such cases 
more seed will shell off aud be lost from the 
early heads than would grow iu the later 
ones. In any case the owner should carefully 
watch it, and nse his judgment in the matter, 
remembering that the earlier it is cut and 
housed, as a rule, the better weather he can 
expect for curing aud securing the crop. 
When in a proper condition of ripeness, it 
should be cut with a self-raking reaper and 
left in quite small gavels, aud as soon as 
thoroughly dried on top, these should be put 
into moderate-sized cocks, using barley forks 
for haudling it. Many people have an idea 
that it must lie in the field until the straw and 
chaff get half rotten before being drawn, in 
order that it may hull easily. But with tbe 
modern clover thrashers and hollers, this is 
not at all necessary; and besides this, much 
seed shells off and is wasted and the straw is 
worthless, while if well saved and properly 
housed, the latter is worth half as much as 
Timothy hay. When thoroughly cured in the 
cock, it should, if possible, find a place under 
cover, as it is a very poor crop for stacking 
out. It can lie thrashed at the convenience of 
the grower. If eut aud cured as above des¬ 
cribed, and the straw is fed to stock of any 
kind with plenty of such rich foods as corn- 
meal, bran, oats, oil-meal or cotton-seed meal, 
etc., etc., and the manure is returned to the 
fields without wasting and leaching, uo one 
will find his land getting any poorer because 
he uses it to raise clover seed. "rustic.” 
CAUSE OF SCAB ON POTATOES. 
I send by this mail a sample of scabby pota¬ 
to, such as I have seen both here and in 
Massachusetts. These potatoes grew within 
an inch or two of the surface in very dry, 
light land where I have never seen a wire- 
worm, and, more than this, we have had 
scarcely auy rain for six to eight weeks and 
the surface of the ground has been dry and 
hot enough to roost the pests had they ven¬ 
tured on the piece. It is very uncommon to 
see a wire-worm here at anytime, and even 
if there were plenty of them iu the ground, it 
would not necessarily follow that ihe diffi¬ 
culty was caused by them. 1 have seen their 
work in Massachusetts on potatoes, apples,etc., 
so as to be able readily to distinguish it, and 1 
have never yet seen it iu any form resembling 
this. So far as I have seen, they invariably 
eat directly into the potato, sometimes their 
whole length, making a hole only the size of 
the worm. w. f. b. 
Hammouton, N. J. 
farm topics. 
FARM ETHICS. 
FENCES. 
One night, not long ago, I was suddenly 
awakened by the ominous sound of tramping 
feet near my house. 1 knew too well what it 
meant, for ’twas a sound I had heard before— 
my neighbor's luafe aud colt had broken into 
my garden and wore tramping and tearing it 
to pieces. 
Well, I did what 1 suppose every one else 
would have done under similar circumstances 
—threw on a few clothes, and ran out, intend¬ 
ing to drive the intruders into the street. 
