without much hallooing, which is very disa¬ 
greeable, and. if much practiced, loses al] 
effect on the oxen. The same thing is true of 
the excessive use of the lash. It is important 
that the cattle should know the use of the 
lash; but they should very seldom feel it. 
Thus trained, they are much more docile and 
prompt to obey the word, whereas, if con¬ 
stantly lashed and goaded, they become con¬ 
fused and wild and don’t know what to do. 
Let the steers learn these lessons well, and 
exorcise them with a cart and with a stone- 
boat before you attempt to teach them to back. 
Few cattle back well; they are so apt to 
spread apart, turning their hind quarters out. 
It requires much patience and repeated 
lessons. Give the first lesson without a cart, 
then with one; but do not try them before a 
wagon, for if the steeers are three years old, 
you will lose all patience. In backing, the 
yoke slips forward and rests against the base 
of the horns. This is an awkward way at 
best, but almost universally customary with 
horned cattle. Sometimes breeching is used; 
and with polled cattle this is absolutely neces¬ 
sary. The breeching usually consists of a 
broad band of harness leather, best made 
double, passing around the buttocks and con¬ 
nected with the yoke by means of an eye-bolt 
and ring inserted iu the yoke about three 
inches outside the bo w holes of each ox. It 
is kept iu position by two straps attached by 
buckles on the breeching straps crossing over 
the loins, where they are sewed together and 
buckled at their forward ends to the opposite 
side-straps just back of the shoulder. With 
breeching, the yoke has very little play back 
and forth in backing, and it is much easier 
for the cattle whether they be horned or 
hornless. 
OLxttyXttXmt. 
A COMFORTABLE BARN. 
Wh are indebted to our friend J. H. Drum¬ 
mond, of Yankee Ridge, Ohio, for the des¬ 
cription of the excellent barn shown at Fig. 
543. In this cold, biting weather such a barn 
will be head-quarters for stock comfort and 
profit. The building shown at Fig. 543, is 
34x45 feet, with a 16-foot story and basement. 
Fig. 544 represents the main floor, which is 
divided as follows: B, hay mow, 15%x34 
feet; C, room for farming implements, 
15^x33 feet; A, barn floor, 14x34; D, gran¬ 
ary, llxlSX feet, with the smaller compart¬ 
ments for bins; the doors are shown at either 
end of the floor, while E is a stairway 
and opening through which to throw hay. 
The granary and implement room are nine 
feet high, with a convenient loft above each. 
The basement, Fig. 545, is framed on three 
sides, with a cut stone wall on the other, as 
shown at Fig. 543. G shows the horse stable, 
14x25 feet; F, cow stable, 14x20 feet; H, en¬ 
trance, 6x45 feet; J, sheep stable, 14x45 feet. 
The doors at either end of the sheep stable are 
made double, so that a wagon can be driven 
in to secure the manure. Grain can also be 
loaded here from a spout which connects with 
granary above. Mr. Drummond built this 
barn at a cost, besides his own time, of $010. 
He had his own timber, however, and bought 
nothing but siding and shingles. He esti¬ 
mates the oost to one obliged to buy all the 
materials, at over $1,000. 
farm Coynes. 
WHEAT BRAN AND THE ELMIRA FAR- 
MERS’ CLUB. 
ST J. B. B. 
The Club blunders', comparative feeding 
values of roller and stone ground bran; 
teachings of analysis; comparative manor¬ 
ial values of both kinds. 
In the last issue of the Husbaudman, are 
the remarks of various members of the 
Elmira Farmers’ Club, made in answer to 
this very important question of one of its 
members: “Is it not wise for farmers in this 
locality who have not enough hay aud coarse 
fodder, to buy wheat bran as a substitute?” 
adding that wheat bran can be bought at 
$16 per ton. I read, with much surprise at the 
the old-fogyistn of men who weekly at¬ 
tend a Farmers’ Club noted everywhere, and 
who certainly should read and think aud keep 
up with the times, that wheat brau now¬ 
adays is uot what it used-to-be; that with 
the improved machinery bran is the mere 
outer skin of the wheat unmixed with flour, 
and therefore of less value than that of olden 
times; aud while most of the members were 
almost sure they would buy brau, even the 
miserable stuff now made, at $16 per ton. yet 
they bewailed the wretched condition to 
which bran had been “ground down” by the 
new roller mode of making flour. 
Now the fact, is, aud it should be fully 
known and realized by American farmers, 
that as a substitute for clover hay, and a 
mixture to be fed with meadow hay composed 
of Timothy, Red Top, etc , there is nothing 
equal to wheat bran, and the closer it is 
ground aud the more closely the flour is taken 
that gives anything like a proper estimate of 
the worth of this valuable food. 
Monroe, N. Y. 
-*-*-*- 
FARM WISDOM. 
The manufacture of butter begins at the 
cow’s mouth, and ends a*, the purchaser’s 
mouth .A well seasoned wood pile 
makes the dinner taste better.Books, 
games and pleasant evenings are cheaper than 
skating rinks.Hard work, complaining 
and neglect will bring out the white flag on 
your wife’s cheeks.A little attention 
and kindness will paint, them up again. 
.... You got the protuiu u on your stock, now 
turn round and develop that premium boy... 
. The only thing yon can carry out of 
this world is what you have given away.... 
Every cent made by cheating your neighbors 
will weigh a ton when you most desire to rise. 
.*-A hard, snowy Winter is good for the 
ground. A mild Winter gives yon a chance 
to drain and do other out door work, The 
season is ell right anyway.Your cattle 
have walked into the barn with the life of 
your meadows. Remember this next Spring. 
• ..The snow covers up a great, many sius 
against agriculture, but they will all come out 
in the Spring. The training of dogs aud 
boys is much alike. If you ‘‘foor with them 
and kick them, you will feel their teeth in 
your leg—or iu your heart, someday. 
The grind stone is too good a friend to be left 
out in the storm. Give it shelter. 
farm (£conanuj. 
BARN-YARD MANURE rs.FERTILIZERS. 
Our good friend. Dr. W. S. Combs, of Free¬ 
hold, New Jersey, reports an experience in 
out of it, the more valuable it is ton for ton. 
In reducing wheat by the roller process 
the ' 'chit” or germ is all left in the bran, and 
a ton of “roller bran” is of considerably more 
value for feeding purposes then a ton of 
“stone ground” bran or of the finest flour, 
and especially is this true where the bran is 
to be used to supplement meadow hay. 
According to the average of many analyses 
of American foods, made by Prof. Jenkins, 
meadow hay contains 8.45 per cent.; clover 
bay, 11 88 per cent.; flour of winter wheat, 
8.56 per cent.; while new or roller bran con¬ 
tains 14.54 per cent, of albuminoids or flesh- 
formiug elements, aud tbese are most 
costly. Of the carbohydrates or fat and heat- 
formers, meadow hay contains 44 45 per cent.; 
clover hay, 41 per cent,; wheat flour, 76.79 per 
cent., and wheat bran, 50 percent, thus being 
richer iu this element than any of the hays 
and only second to flour. Of the free oils, 
meadow hay contains 197 percent.; clover 
hay, 1.04 per cent.; wheat flour, 1.19 per cent.; 
and wheat bran, 3.56 per cent, and as one per 
cent, of free fat (when not in excess), is 
counted equivalent to 2]4 per cent, of carbo¬ 
hydrates, the wheat bran is seen to be even 
more valuable in these than wheat flour; of 
that portion of these elements which is digest¬ 
ible, and therefore available to sustain life, 
the proportion is much greater in favor of the 
bran. 
There is another thing that should be taken 
into account in considering the value of any 
food, and that is the value of the manure that 
will result from the use of the food, and here 
it will be found that the bran is a great way 
ahead. As will be seen by comparing their 
values, as shown in Dr. Lawes’s table, esti¬ 
mating nitrogen as worth 18 cents per pound, 
potash at six cents, and phosphoric acid at 1(1 
cents, the tuannre made from a ton of meadow 
hay would be worth 83.35; from a ton of 
clover, $10.66; from a ton of wheat flour, $8 16; 
while a ton of coarse bran gives manure worth 
$16.15. The fact is, wheat bran is very im¬ 
perfectly appreciated, and I can excuse the 
members of the Elmira Farmers’ Club for 
their ignorance ou this subject. The Rural 
New-Yorker is the only paper which I read 
the use of barn-yard manure ou potatoes, 
which we cannot quite explain. He writes: 
“On one part of the field I put all my yard 
manure—150 to 175 good two-horse loads. 
This part of the field has had also occasional 
applications of barn-yard manure during the 
last 10 years. The manure was spread last 
Fall and plowed in this past Spring. After 
plowing, the whole field was treated alike, 
Mapes’ Potato Manure being applied at the 
rate of 1,500 pounds per acre, in three appli¬ 
cations. The total yield for the 20 acres was 
6,545 bushels, or au average of 327 % per acre. 
The average on the part, having no yard 
manure was385 bushels. The largest yield of 
a single acre was 409 bushels.” 
While this was a splendid yield over the 
whole field, the difference against the use of 
barn yard manure was more than 60 bushels. 
What could have made the difference? Was 
it the season, the soil, or was there a surfeit 
of manure? The soil was a clay loam and this 
field, when we saw it in August, was the finest 
eight we ever witnessed. 
SALT AND SALTING BUTTER. 
T. D. CURTIS. 
The proper so?'t of salt; working it into the 
butter; evils of overworking and of using 
inferior salt. 
Salting butter may now be classed among 
the tine arts. To evenly distribute the salt 
without overworking the butter, is the prob¬ 
lem that modern skill has quite satisfactorily 
solved. The more expert in the art have 
learned that much depends nftt only upon the 
pnrity but upon the condition of the salt. 
The grain must be even, tine, easily dissolved, 
and as free from sharp angles as possible. A 
natural graiu is preferable to one made by 
grinding,aud salt containing the water of crys¬ 
tallization much more readily dissolves than 
one made anhydrous by drying at a high tem¬ 
perature. An an hydrous salt must ftrst absorb 
the water of crystallization, and for this, 
time is required and lost. When the absorp¬ 
tion is complete, the salt Is in the condition 
of that which has not had the water of 
crystallization expelled, and just ready to 
begiu tbe process of liquefying into 
brine. An even grain secures even lique¬ 
faction throughout the butter, so that when 
one grain is dissolved all are dissolved. 
It will thus be seen that there is advan¬ 
tage in a uniform grain. A hard grain 
dissolves slowly and requires the presence of 
more moisture than a softer grain. It is 
therefore liable to remain undissolved in tbe 
butter and to give it that gritty condition so 
much objected to by refined consumers and 
all dealers who supply first-class customers. 
By remaining undissolved, it is more diflicult 
to incorporate it evenly with the butter, 
aud hence it is more liable to cause overwork¬ 
ing—which is among butter makers an almost 
universal evil, which but few have had the 
judgment and skill to overcome. 
This working butter with undissolved salt 
in it is a very pernicious as well as common 
practice. It is almost as bad as so much sand, 
scouring the life out of the butter and des¬ 
troying that clean, granular appearance which 
is known under the term of “tbe grain.” Iu 
place of this, tbe butter becomes waxy, greasy 
and salvy. with a sbiny surface quickly recog¬ 
nized by the experienced eye. Coarse grained 
salt is almost as bad as hard-grained, for the 
reason that it is likely to remain undissolved, 
and cannot, therefore, be readily worked into 
the butter without overworking. Indeed, 
working butter at all is overworking it. and 
this injurious and unnecessary labor can and 
should be avoided by the use of fine, even¬ 
grained and freely dissolving salt, and by the 
practice of improved methods, which I will 
explain in another article. Yet some people, 
who are quite well posted and intelligent iu 
other matters, still persist in using cheap salt, 
regardless of best quality and condition, and 
some even imagine common barrel salt is good 
enough because they have always used it, and, 
perhaps, because they have at some time de- 
ceivedsome dealer into payingthe same price 
for a package salted with poor salt that he did 
for one salted with the best foreign make. 
It is nought to them that the butter may 
have deteriorated rapidly on the holder’s 
hands, or that future purchases of their 
butter may have been made with caution and 
at a shade lower price for the purpose of 
covering future contingencies; because these 
facts were not made openly manifest, or if 
anything was said about the salt, it was at¬ 
tributed to prejudice and considered of no 
account. Such butter makers are uot likely 
to establish a very high reputation for the 
production of fancy butter that always com¬ 
mands a fancy price. But it must be conceded 
that much depends upon how the butter is 
made as well as upon the quality of salt 
used, and that some butter makers turn out 
a product superior to that of others who use 
the best of 3alt, No bind of salt can obviate, 
though it may,to some extent, palliate, the evil 
of lack of judgment and skill in the manu¬ 
facture of butter. 
£1 )t Poultri^Barlr. 
ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION. 
P. H. JACOBS. 
Essentials of a good incubator; operating an 
incubator; successes in incubation; space 
fur chick raising; easy with a brooder. 
Quite a large uumber of incubators of 
different makes are offered for selection, each 
possessing some particular merit of its own. 
Though some of them are well equipped with 
modern appliances for regulating the heat, 
supplying moisture, and turning the eggs, yet, 
after all, everything depends upon the oper¬ 
ator, for while the incubators will usually 
perform all that is claimed for them, the 
novice has been led, by the exaggerated praises 
of the makers, to rely upon the machine too 
exclusively, and thus he has been induced to 
overlook many little details that require 
human observation, it would require a 
lengthy article to fully describe an incubator; 
but any device, by which the temperature can 
be kept uniformly at 108°. with proper pro¬ 
vision for air and moisture, will hatch eggs, 
though success depends largely upon the 
vitality of the parent stock. 
In operating an incubator, the common 
errors are the haudlfug of the eggs too fre¬ 
quently, and the constant interference of 
those who examine them through curiosity. 
The process should be conducted methodically 
and in a business-like manner. The first two 
days the eggs should not be disturbed in any 
manner, not even to turn them, as the heat 
should be well maintained at a temperature 
fully up to 103 degrees, and without variation, 
in order to give the germ an advantageous 
start, which is very important. After the 
