SEPTW 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
thus introduced, farmers cannot he too careful 
as to where and what they buy. The Board 
of Live Stock Commissioners are supposed to 
have an oversight of these matters, but as 
their attention is directed more particularly to 
cattle diseases, farmers who would avoid loss¬ 
es from swine plague or other maladies among 
their hogs, must look out for themselves. 
Great care should be taken not ODly in buy¬ 
ing, but in feeding, watering and the man¬ 
agement generally. This word of warning is 
applicable as well to other parts of the coun¬ 
try. At this time of year particularly, spec¬ 
ial pains should be taken to keep the hogs in 
the best condition of health and thrift, for at 
no other season do they seem so liable to con¬ 
tract disease. 
Sulphur and powdered copperas, each five 
pounds, wood ashes, two bushels, and slaked 
lime, one bushel, all well mixed together and 
placed under shelter within reach of the hogs, 
will do the latter good by way of keeping 
them free from worms and lice, and thus 
better able to resist contagious or infectious 
diseases, and the influence of malaria so pre¬ 
valent during the latter part of Summer or in 
the Fall. 
During night the germs of swine plague are 
thought to collect on the damp grass, and the 
malarial air is believed to settle near the sur¬ 
face of the ground. For these reasons it is 
strongly recommended that hogs be kept from 
going on pasture in the morning, until after 
► the dew is off. Among all our farm animals 
the hog carries his head lower than any other, 
§ and is therefore all the more exposed to the 
evils of bad air settling near the ground. 
Sangamon Co., Ill. phil thrifton. 
STEALERS OF VITALITY. 
The amount of vitality deliberately stolen 
from our domestic animals by parasites can¬ 
not be computed. There is nothing more dis¬ 
gusting than these wretched, crawling 
creatures that delight in filth, and die in 
cleanliness. No domestic bird or animal can 
prosper with these blood thirsty robbers fast¬ 
ened upon it. Few respectable human beings 
ever know what it is to he covered with these 
parasites. The story told by those who have 
been obliged to endure the torture is enough to 
make the flesh creep. The constant irritation 
and disgust are almost enough to drive a sen¬ 
sitive person insane. It would seem as if the 
man who allows his poultry and farm animals 
to become covered with lice, is guilty of a 
crime. Men can he punished in many States 
for acts that do not inflict half the pain and 
annoyance to animals that lice produce. The 
magnified foot of a louse presents a savage 
appearance. There are hooks and saw-like 
attachments, with barbs that catch in the 
flesh and hold firmly. In hen lice, there are 
strong jaws that fairly rend the flesh. 
On the ordinary farm, the hens are too often 
obliged to endure this agony without help. 
The farmer will see that his cattle and horses 
are properly cared for; but the hens are ex¬ 
pected to find a home in a house fairly alive 
with vermiu, or on two or three old roosts in 
the barn cellar. Night and day the poor hens 
are pursued by these tormep.tors, audeven the 
nests where they are expected to lay are filled 
with old hay, that has become a perfect tene¬ 
ment house, owing to the lice that swarm In 
it. This state of affairs is both cruel and un¬ 
profitable. Fully 90 per cent, of the common 
diseases of poultry are attributable to lice; 
where the disease is not immediately pro¬ 
duced, the vitality of the bird is so weakened, 
that it falls an easy prey to the contagious 
diseases that abound. 
No farmer should allow his hens to go into 
winter-quarters this year without first destroy¬ 
ing these filthy parasites. The practice of 
keeping the hens in the barn cellar or in a 
shed near the stable is not a good one. The 
poultry of the farm can be made of enough 
importance to demand a place lor itself. The 
small red mites that are so difficult to kill, will 
cause horses much auuoyance when the hen¬ 
roost is too near the stalls. Cellars and sheds 
are more difficult to clean than a house where 
special arrangements can be made. But w her- 
ever the bens are kept, kill the lice now, and 
be no longer disgraced. Lice live and breed in 
tilth. They will not enter a region of abso¬ 
lute cleanliness. That fact shows how the 
scourge may he prevented, but after the ene¬ 
my has once taken possession, the most heroic 
treatment iB necessary to dislodge him. No 
parasite cau live in boiling water, kerosene, 
sulphur fumes, or in contact with pyrethrum. 
Even with these strong aids I know from 
experience what a disgusting job it is to attack 
the ordinary hen house at this season of the 
year. In the Interests of decency, however, 
the attack should be made or the breeding 
pen burned down. 
The first thing is to clean the place thorough, 
ly of mauure. It will be found baked and 
packed to the floor and roosts. Scrape it with 
a sharp hoe, scrub it with boiling water—any¬ 
thing to get it all out for once. Take out the 
roosts, and, after scraping the manure off 
with the hoe, pick up one end and slowly pour 
kerosene so that it will run down over every 
inch of the roost. Take the hay from the 
nests and burn it all up, and pour keroseue 
into the boxes, so that it will enter every erack 
and joint. Apply boiling hot soap suds to 
every square inch of the inside of the house. 
Take an old broom and mop it into every cor¬ 
ner and crevice. It will be impossible for you 
to use too much hot water. 
Many of our best poultry keepers advise 
fumigation in desperate cases. To do this pro¬ 
perly, whitewash the inside of the house in a 
thorough manner. Close the doors and win¬ 
dows as tightly as possible. Put an iron kettle 
containing a quantity of sulphur inside, and 
either burn it by means of alcohol, or place 
on it a piece of red hot iron. A great many 
of the lice will be found upon the hens. There 
must be no half-way work about it. Every 
heu must he caught and dusted with pyreth¬ 
rum. An ointment of sulphur, lard, and kero¬ 
sene applied to the head and under the wings 
will also destroy the pests. There will be no 
fun about this work; a man’s flesh will crawl 
for a week afterwards, and he will want to 
bury his clothes; but it is the only way to kill 
the pests when they have once taken posses¬ 
sion. And the labor must not cease. The 
poultry man must never grow w r eary of well 
doing, unless he desires to go through the 
same operation year after year. Keep the 
roosts clean, and drench them frequently with 
keroseue. Change the hay in the nests fre¬ 
quently, and examine the hens at intervals. 
If any lice are discovered, dust the whole flock 
with pyrethrum, and clean out the house with 
hot water. Use whitewash with a lavish 
hand, and clean out the manure as often as 
you can. In Winter give the hens a good 
dust bath, in which dry, unleached ashes are 
mixed. Now, I beg of you again, attend to 
this matter at once. Don’t let these disgust¬ 
ing creatures thrive and fatten on food that 
you ought to eat yourself. hired man. 
BLACK JAVAS. 
It is wonderful what an interest is being 
taken in pure bred poultry at the present 
time as compared with 20 or more years ago. 
But few farmers at that time would have been 
purchasers of eggs at $3.00 per setting; now 
fanciers sell hundreds of dollars'worth at that 
price, and the demand seems to be increasing. 
Farmers are beginning to realizB that with a 
good variety of poultry and with proper care, 
there is as much (or more) profit on the money 
invested in fowls as in any other kind of stock 
on the farm. “But what kind of fowls shall 
I keep!” is the oft-asked question. 
I think each person should keep the breed 
or breeds best suited to his fancy, otherwise 
they will be likely not to receive the care 
necessary to make their keeping a financial 
success. It is claimed that the Brahmas and 
Cochins are the heaviest weights, and the 
Leghorns and Hamburgs the best for egg 
production. But what is most wanted on the 
farm is a fowl combining, as nearly as possi¬ 
ble, the good points of the above mentioned 
breeds; or, in other words, a general-purpose 
fowl. During the past few years 1 have test¬ 
ed several varieties of pure bred poultry, with 
a view of obtaining the fowl best suited to the 
farm, and although it has taken time and 
money to do this, I am well satisfied with the 
results of my experiments, as I have found a 
fowl so well suited to my wants and fancy 
that I intend, in the future, to breed it ex¬ 
clusively. It is the Black Java, and as the 
breed is not widely known as yet, 1 will give 
the Roral readers a short history of it. 
Thirty or more years ago, a celebrated M.D. 
living in Missouri, had iu his yards a few very 
fine black fowls which he called “Javas.” A 
family living near came into possession of 
some of the eggs, from which the present 
breed of Javas has descended. This family, 
after some time, removed to New York and 
took with them their fowls, which, in their 
new homes, attracted the attention of a noted 
poultry judge by their large size, beautiful, 
glossy plumage, and great laying qualities. 
Alter' breeding them a few years, he made 
application to the American Poultry Associa¬ 
tion to have them admitted into the “Standard 
of Excellence,” which was done. 
They are to-day bred by most of the best 
and largest breeders iu the country. 1 quote 
from a circular of a well knowu breeder of this 
variety: “No other breed is more highly esteem¬ 
ed in America to-day—where known. It has at¬ 
tained this popularity, too, entirely on its own 
intrinsic merits, without the eclat of a foreign 
origin, or the outlay of large sums of money 
in puffing. As table fowls they are exceed¬ 
ingly sweet, juicy, tine grained, tender, and 
delicate. spring chicks they feather very 
early and mature rapidly. As market fowls 
they are unsurpassed, having large, plump 
bodies with full breasts, cleau, black legs, with 
the bottom of the foot yellow, and a bright 
yellow skin. They always command the 
highest market price. As layers they are 
good in all seasons. I have yet to see the 
fowl that will lay more eggs in a whole year 
than the Black Javas. Very hardy as chicks, 
aud mature fowls, and being an out-and-out 
American breed, they adapt themselves to all 
climates aud situations better ttmu any other 
breed. As mothers they are excellent, being 
neither non-sitters nor persistent sitters. They 
are kind and gentle, and good foragers. In 
fine, this comparatively new breed combines 
all the sturdy and excellent qualities of the 
ideal fowl to a wonderful degree. They are 
the fowls for general use. ” 
In color they are a rich, lustrous black, with 
that beautiful greeu shading so desirable in 
black fowls. The standard weights are, cock, 
10 pounds; hens, eight pounds. I have bred 
them two years, and find their good qualities 
uot overrated. Jacob heckman. 
De Kalb Co., Ills. 
iVWOCAffc»AV.V< I'.MW.W 
-••sf 
£I)j e SlpiariatL 
GOOD QUEENS AND HOW TO REAR 
THEM. 
The success of the apiary depends more up¬ 
on the queens than upon any other one thing: 
and among the average honey producers, no 
one thing is so little cared for. If we could 
have all the queens in our yard as good as a 
few we could select, we could nearly double 
our crop of honey. A careful selection, with 
judicious weeding out of the poor ones, will 
do very much towards improvement. But we 
must not expect to attain wonderful results in 
one year. It is not a rare thing to see the 
workers of some particular queen show desir¬ 
able traits, such as being able to work on Red 
Clover, but it is a hard task to “fix” auy new 
characteristic, aud nothing but years will do 
it. If I had a queen whose progeny could 
reach the honey in Red Clover, and transmit 
that ability to her descendants, one thousand 
dollars would not buy her. I fully believe 
the time will come when the Italiaus can and 
will be worked, or rather bred, up to that 
point; but I can see it only in the dim future. 
An instrument has been iuvented (I believe 
by Rev. S. M. Locke) to accurately test the 
reaching power of the worker bees. After 
one has ascertained which colony of bees have 
the longest proboscis, then he should breed all 
his young queens from that stock. I use only 
Italians, for they combine the most desirable 
qualities, aud we must take a thoroughbred 
to start with, for a hybrid is too apt to deter¬ 
iorate. To rear good queens, we must have a 
good mother. I select one that is large, though 
not necessarily the largest; in shape it must 
be long, with the back part of the body taper¬ 
ing, avoiding a chubby-looking queen. In 
color, my choice must be yellow, shading off 
to brown at the extremity. Black rings are 
a sure indication of au intermixture of native 
blood. In prolificness, she should be able, in 
the highi of the season, to keep eight frames 
full of brood. Her worker progeny should all 
show three bright yellow bands without any 
shading of brown with the yellow. They 
should also be industrious and gentle. Of 
course, the drones should be large and well 
marked, and the queen’s progeny be duplicates 
of the mother as nearly as possible. Have all 
the cells built lu powerful colonies, and they 
must produce good queens. 
Onondaga Co., N. Y. o. M. goodspeed. 
A NEW USE FOR PYRETHRUM. 
A writer in the N. E. Homestead, says 
that “the claim that farmers cannot mix their 
own goods is all nonsense. The manufacturer 
must have an advance on the cost of his goods 
of at least $U) to every tou, iu order to have 
any show for profit at all. This is about 25 
per cent. When Prof. Johnson said, in his 
annual report, that farmers could save from 
25 to 33 per cent, by making their own fertil¬ 
izers, it was received with incredulity by a 
great many farmers who believed what the in¬ 
terested parties—the manufacturers aud deal¬ 
ers—told them.” The question is just this: 
Can fertilizer manufacturers buy the fertili¬ 
zer ingredients enough cheaper than farmers, 
aud mix them enough cheaper to insure them 
a living profit? This question, we hope, is 
elsewhere answered. 
Stock Shelters.— The Breeder’s Gazette 
earnestly advocates the building of shelters 
for stock, even in the sections where the 
Winters are open and mild. Figures show 
that the losses in stock from exposure 
are not al ways largest in the coldest countries; 
but in those sections where cattle receive 
little attention, aud where chilling rains take 
the place of severe cold weather. In the New 
England States the annual losses of cattle 
from disease, stress of weather, and other 
like causes, amounts to but two per cent., ac¬ 
cording to the Department of Agriculture. 
In the Gulf States where very little provision 
is made for animal comfort, the loss amounts 
to eight per cent. After all, it is not against 
the “cold snaps" that cattle need protection, 
so much as against the ordinary stormy 
weather that comes along at almost auy 
time. The cold aud drizzling rains that make 
the Winters in some parts of the South so un¬ 
pleasant, even for human beings, are very 
discomforting to stock. When the skin is 
continually wet, there is a constant loss of 
heat, that tells rapidly upon animal vitality. 
A healthy man can stay out in cold weather 
and enjoy the clear, crisp air, but a dull, eat¬ 
ing rain fills him with discomfort and is sure 
to drive him uuder cover. 
Weed Seeds, —The botanist of the Ohio 
Agricultural Station has been counting and 
estimating the number of seeds found upon a 
single plant of the most obnoxious weeds 
grown in that State. In the Shepherd’s Purse 
he found the number of seeds iu a medium¬ 
sized plaut, 37,500; in the Dandelion 12,100; 
Wild Pepper Grass, 18,400; Wheat-thief (Lith- 
ospermum arvense), 7,000 ; the common 
thistle (Cirsiuui lauceolatum), fi5,3G0; Camo¬ 
mile, 15,920; Butter Weed, 8,587; Rag Weed, 
4.3fi<>; common purslane, 38S,8UU: common 
plantain, 42.200; Burdock, 38,800. This is an 
important lesson which no farmer should 
pass lightly over. It should be remembered 
that each one of these plants extracts from 
the soil precisely as much valuable plant food 
as an equal weight of any valuable crop; 
that the growing of weeds is just as exhaust¬ 
ing to the lund as the growing of valuable 
crops, and when the farmer looks at a grow 
ing weed he should remember that if passed 
by and allowed to perfect its seeds, It will not 
only exhaust the laud, but will iu a single year 
multiply to thousands. When a man grasps a 
weed to pull it up; there is a great satisfaction 
in feeling that one turn of the wrist will 
exterminate not only that plant, but what 
would next year cover an acre of ground. 
There is really nothing that is more honor to 
the farmer thau clean fields, and nothing 
that pays better too. 
Mr. E. Holeknbkck, of Genesaee Co., 
Mich., writes me thus: “Your discussion of 
pyrethrum as a plant insecticide in solution 
led me to try it on my horses, sponging them 
with the solution as a preventive of the an 
noying attacks of the hot and other flies. 1 
have used it with excellent results." Mr. H., 
in reply to an inquiry, wiites me that he used 
oue dram to a quart of water, aud that it gave 
entire relief to bis horses, as also to those of a 
neighbor, who was plowing for him. He 
sponged the horses in several places, aud fre¬ 
quently repeated It. He has used it for a 
week. Mr. H. wishes me to try the remedy 
aud report. 1 shall hasten to do so, and as 
the remedy is so simple and cheap, 1 would 
advise others to do so also. It pains me very 
much to see our poor, faithful animals wor 
ried by bot flies, house flies, tubanus flies, 
etc.; aud if we can use a simple, pleasant re¬ 
medy, like pyrethrum, successfully, it is a 
mutter of very great importance and worthy 
of wide circulation. I shall try at once und 
report. a. j. cook. 
Prize Dairy Farm. —The Royal Agricul¬ 
tural Society of England, offered a prize for 
the best managed dairy farm under 100 acres. 
This prize has been won by Mr. E. G. Hother 
sail, who farms 81 acres of grass land. There 
are only 41 acres of pasture, and the dairy 
consists of 52 cows. Nearly $3,000 are spent 
each year iu purchasing food for cattle. No 
cotton-seed meal Is used, as it is thought to 
injure the butter. The cows are bought with 
first or peoond calf, aud kept three or four 
years, and then sold for beef. They are 
mostly grade Short-horns. No calves are 
reared. At least 2K tons of hay must be pro¬ 
duced per acre to pay expenses. Iu addition 
to home-made manures, about 150 tons are 
annually purchased. The mowing ground is 
dressed from October. The pastures are 
quickened with bone meal. W itb all this ex¬ 
pense and labor, a good profit is made on this 
farm. __ 
Canadian “Findings.”— The Canada Ex¬ 
perimental Farm managers have become cer¬ 
tain of some things regarding farming, among 
which we notice the following finds:—ihey 
