NEW YORE; MAY 9, 1885 
PRICE FIVE CENTS 
$2.00 PER TEAR. 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 183:5, by the Rural New-Yorker In the ofHce of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.] 
farm Cronoimj. 
$ural HVc.^t A. II. farm ^lotc.ss. 
WHY WE FEED STOCK. 
The relation which the soil occupies to¬ 
wards crop-production, is essentially the same 
as that occupied by the manger to the feed¬ 
ing animal—it is the medium from which the 
plant obtains the raw material, which, through 
its internal organism, is converted into some 
valuaLde product. Though the rainfall be 
ever so abundant, or the sunshine ever so 
favorable, it is needless to expect continued 
good crops from land (uo matter how rich it 
may have been at the beginning) to which we do 
not iusome way supply an abundance of those 
elements from which the plant can obtain its 
needed food. Really about the only limit to 
the productiveness of any properly propor¬ 
tioned soil, is the amount of available plaut 
food applied iu the form of manure or fertil¬ 
izer. The profits of farming depend upon 
the conversion of the largest amount of raw 
material—manure—into the most v aluablo pro¬ 
duct, and the important problem to be solved 
is, how, and iu what form, cun that "raw ma¬ 
terial” be supplied to the best advantage. 
We long ago learned that if we purchased 
a load of stable manure at 75 cents, by the 
Gate. Fig. 169. 
spoke ; the spokes are made of one-aud-a- 
quarter-inch plank, and by having the plank 
the combined width of the narrow and wide 
ends of the spoke, the spokes can be outside by 
side without any waste of material. The wheels 
WHITE COCHIN FOWLS. 
RN-Y. 
A SUBSTANTIAL GATE. 
10.37 per cent.; Horse-tooth, 9.24 per cent; 
Chester, 8.43 per cent. 
4. The sugars in strippings of Egyptian 
sweet corn slightly exceed those in the un¬ 
stripped stalks. By averaging two tests of 
each, of like date; sweet com stripped, gave 
12.38 per cent; while the unstripped gave 
11.66 per cent of conbined glucose and su¬ 
crose. 
5. The weight of fodder is much greater in 
the coarse varieties of com than in the sweet 
corn, the average weight of one stalk being. 
Horse-tooth, three pounds ; Chester, 2.67 
pounds; sweet, 2.17 pounds. 
6. The percentage of nutritious fodder in 
the sweet corn is below that in the Chester 
corn, and, as shown above, the former is not 
greatly superior in saccharine qualities. The 
above tables show the average strippings of 
the three varieties to be as follows: 8weet 
com strippings, 44 per cent, of the weight of 
the entire stalk: Horse-tootb, 40 per cent.; 
Chester, 48 per cent. 
7. We may better compare the relative val¬ 
ues of these varietes by applying the rates 
given on a larger scale; therefore we will 
suppose an acre of each to be grown giving a 
crop of 20 tons of Horse-tooth; 11 per cent, 
less of Chester and 2S per cent of sweet com. 
We get the following table:— 
oxk acre or kao a. 
10,0.0 » Horse-tooeh ft 9 24 per cent.=-3.695 ft. sugar 
strippings, -W per cent —IS.iXO ft 
lO.OUO ft. less It per cent, — 35.600 ft. Chester 
<33.18 per cent—2,894 ft. sugar: strippings 48 per cent. 
—17,088 lb. 
40,OM nr, less 23 per cents—28,600 ft. Sugar ft 10.37 per 
cent—2.9?« ft. strippings;+t per cent.—12,672 a. 
By this estimate we see that the Horse- 
tooth fodder gives about 800 pounds more of 
sugar, and 1.000 less of fodder than the Ches¬ 
ter, and 700 pounds more sugar and 3,328 
pounds more fodder than the sweet. The 
Chester gives about the same amount of sugar 
and 4.416 more pounds of strippings. The 
sweet corn is undoubtedly the most unprofit¬ 
able variety. chas. e. little. 
Ocean Co., N. J. 
WHITE COCHINS. From a photograph Fig. 165. 
UFF and Partridge Coch- 
» ins are among the oldest and 
most popular breeds of 
fowls in this country, and 
are too well known to need 
auy comment; but for some 
reason, Black and White 
Cochins, especially the 
White, have been uncertain 
to breed with the true Coch¬ 
in outline. Among the 
most successful breeders of 
White Cochins for many 
y \ \/ years has been Mr. G. W. 
C 'aL Mitchell, of Connecticut. 
At the last exhibition of the 
New' York Fanciers’ Club, at Madison Square 
Garden, he showed a pair of White Cochins 
recently imported by him from England, 
which created quite a sensation among Coch¬ 
in breeders. 
Mr. Mitchell is a member of the E, N. 
Welsh Manufacturing Co., and the birds were 
secured through the English braueh of the 
firm. A friend of the house acts as a judge at 
the p<,.;!try shows there, and he selected 14 
fowls—four cocks and ten hens—for Mr. 
Mitchell, and says there were not left in all 
the country 14 as Hue White Cochins. The 
pair from which the photograph was taken, 
from which our illustration (Fig. 165) is made, 
were shown by Mr. Mitchell merely for exhi¬ 
bition and not for competition, and yet Mr. 
Nevius, the judge scored them, giving, as he 
said, the same figures he would have done had 
they beeu in competition. The cock showed 
96J£ aud the hen 97J± points. Although the 
position iu which the pair were photographed 
does not show them to the best advantage, 
yet the cut is true to life aud shows very 
heavy, low down, well-developed birds and a 
pair uuy breeder of White Cochins would be 
happy to introduce into his yard. We be¬ 
lieve tbis importation inaugurates a new era 
in tho history of White Cochins iu America. 
We are promised a clutch of eggs, and pro¬ 
pose to test them with our other breeds, for 
the benefit of the readers of the Rural New- 
Yorker, aud will report in due time. 
time we had it hauled to the farm, its costs 
would not be less than $1.50; or, if we pur¬ 
chased commercial fertilizers at a cost of 
from $30 to $50 per ton and applied them to 
our fields, that in either case we must first 
deduct from the increased product the amount 
expended for this plant food, together with 
interest on the same, before we could count 
any part of the receipts as profit upon the 
application. In too many instances we found 
that when the first cost of the application 
had been deducted there was nothing left for 
interest, or our share of profit. We were thus 
brought face to face with the propositions 
which confront every farmer; to go on 
in the old way of cropping at the ex¬ 
pense of the stored fertility of the soil and 
see our profits annually growing less through 
the exhaustion of this fertility; to purchase 
commercial fertilizers and other manures, as 
we have said, with little or no profit, or to 
devise some method whereby we could make 
the larger share of the necessary manures at 
a profit, or at least at a cost which should 
make their application profitable. We reason- 
year, adding to the capacity of our buildings 
as needed. We are now building an additional 
barn, with some 5,700 feet of floor surface, 
that we may next Winter greatly add to the 
business. Ou the whole, we may say the ex¬ 
periment was a grand success, paying fairly 
well in money, but much better in the large 
amount of very rich manure which it gives— 
viz.: manure made, not of wet straw, saw¬ 
dust, and shavings, as is the bulk of that for 
sale in the cities, but of sruch material that its 
application compels the land to produce abun¬ 
dant crops. In a word, then, ice feed stock 
that the stock may feed the land. 
CORN FODDER. 
In a previous article I presented tables, ex¬ 
tracted from Prof. Peter Collier’s report to 
the Agricultural Department at Washington, 
for 1881 and 1883. These tables gave four ana¬ 
lytical teste of each of three varieties of corn¬ 
stalks. The object was to find the value of 
stalks in manufacturing sugar. It is supposed 
that sweet corn fodder must be sweeter than 
fodder from common corn, and therefore 
ed that if our English cousins could buy our 
feeding stuffs rich iu both animal and plaut 
food, transport them to their country, and 
feed them to stock for the sake of the result¬ 
ing manures for sustaining and increasing the 
productiveness of their acres, why could not 
we use them at home, saving transportation, 
and sending abroad only the meat aud butter 
products, aud retaining the rich manure to 
feed our crops. 
Looking about, we found that of the stock 
continually being rushed to the great markets, 
not one half was in properly fattened condi¬ 
tion ; that the difference in price between the 
“tops” of the stock and this medium or lower 
grade, was enough to afford a good prospect 
of profitable feeding; that millions of pounds 
of oil-meal, cotton-seed meal, bran, and other 
feeding stuffs were being sold for exportation 
at a price a little above their value for man¬ 
ure; that the fanners all about us were selling 
clover hay at about its tuanurial value, and 
we resolved to try the experiment of stock 
feeding. Commencing in a small way, we 
have gradually extended our operations each 
more toothsome aud fattening. I thiuk I may 
represent the facts presented in the tables 
giveu in my previous article uuder tne follow¬ 
ing points:— 
L There is a very great variation in the same 
variety iu the analyses taken at periods only 
a few weeks apart. Prof. Collier’s tables 
show less than four per cent, saccharine ele¬ 
ments earlier iu July, aud nearly ten per cent, 
later in the month. 
2. Sugar corn gave only a little higher 
maximum analysis of sugars than tield corn, 
the sugars showing 15.89 per cent ;the Chester, 
15.32 per cent and the Horse-tooth, 18.78 per 
eeut. in the highest teste. 
3. By comparing the averaye of both kinds 
of sugar (glucose and sucrose) in the three va¬ 
rieties of corn, there being four analyses of 
each, very little difference appears, sweet 
corn averaging 10.47 per cent, of sugar; Horse- 
tooth, 9.84 per cent., and Chester 10.49 per 
cent. A greater difference is shown by tak¬ 
ing the average of about twelve tests of each 
of these varieties, as given in the report, the 
following being the analyses: sweet corn. 
We show, at Fig. 169, a farm gate planned 
and made by W. B. Hopkins, of Genesee Co., 
N. Y. His gate has been in use four years, 
aud has given constant and increasing satis¬ 
faction. 16 will be seen at 1 in the engraving, 
that the gate has two large wheels that run on 
the ground, extending four or five iuches be¬ 
low the body, thus keeping it always clear of 
the ground. At 3 is shown one end of the 
gate; at 2 is the wheel with one of the collars 
removed to show the way in which it is put 
together. The wheels are bound with old 
buggy tire, fastened with two nails to each 
