644 
FROM DIRECTOR I. P. ROBERTS. 
Yes, wheat straw or clover haulm will make 
a good mulch for wheat when properly ap¬ 
plied. If the land is heavy clay, care must be 
taken not to mulch too heavily. Apply in 
November from half to a ton per acre, and 
spread very evenly. I have just seen, in 
Ohio, clover six inches high, that grew in 
wheat that had been so treated, while wheat 
and clover in adjoining fields were almost a 
failure. 
Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. 
FROM THOMAS F. HUNT. 
The use of straw or other litter for mulching 
wheat is not at all general. I have never seen 
it tried,and the reports I have heard in regard 
to its advisability are somewhat conflicting. 
The only carefully conducted experiments 
with which I am acquainted are those con¬ 
ducted by the Ohio Agricultural Experiment 
Station. A slight benefit occurred from the 
mulch iu a season when wheat would otherwise 
have been a failure; but in an average wheat 
season the mulch was a detriment. With our 
present information it would be much better 
for Western farmers, at least, to apply their 
litter of whatever sort, which is necesssarily 
limited, to corn and grass lands rather than 
to use it as mulch for wheat. 
Illinois University, Champaign. 
SEED CORN. 
FROM W. L. DEVEREAUX. 
I have tested the vitality and germination 
of corn taken from the stalk while yet soft 
and scarcely at all glazed, the same having 
been kept in a very dry place till spring, and 
found that such seed grew as well as any, and 
I have selected corn for seed, with the best 
results, from the standing corn before it was 
considered fit to cut and shock. 
This practice, however, brings in an extra 
call on time at a season when farmers are hard 
pressed in finishing the oat harvest and gath¬ 
ering early potatoes and some early fruits, 
and tilling for wheat. Furthermore, seed 
corn can be selected nearly as well at the time 
of husking. Then I follow this line quite 
closely :—I take from stalks of full growth, 
early ripened—preferring those having two 
or more ears—the upper ear, but rejecting all 
having characteristics not in consonance with 
the variety, noting the number of rows 
of kernels, as well as the color and shape of 
the same and whether they are filled and 
fully ripened to the tip. Still more, I 
select for improvement in length of ear, small¬ 
ness of cob and shortness and smallness of 
stem. 
When breaking an ear off, I leave a few 
husks.moretomark the ear than for the purpose 
of stringing it up to dry. Seed corn is just as 
well off in a barn-loft or other dry place, or, 
better, in seasoned apple barrels headed up^ 
and in that way it requires only an occasional 
examination to see that mice have not gnawed 
into the barrels. In this manner the corn 
comes out for shelling at planting-time in a 
dry and perfect state, keeping safe from mice, 
rats, squirrels and the pestiferous sparrow. 
I select for deep color in Golden Drop; for red 
tips in Smut Nose; for spine or rice kernels in 
Haxal ; for pointed but spineless kernels in 
Pride of the North, and so on. Still more care 
is needed in selecting sweet corn, the drying 
and winter keeping of which cannot be suc¬ 
cessfully carried out without hanging the ears 
up, sometimes separately. 
Wayne Co., N. Y. 
£firm (Tfljncs. 
MARKETING CROPS. 
The careful farmer is not only always ob¬ 
servant of the crop prospects in his own neigh¬ 
borhood, but he is also conversant through 
some reliable paper or papers with the general 
outlook throughout the country. Such facili¬ 
ties are now offered that one need not be ig¬ 
norant of the resources of our own as well as 
foreign countries. Every crop has always at 
some time during the year both a rise and de¬ 
pression. The observant farmer can very 
nearly calculate about the time the rise will 
occur. Let what you intend to throw upon 
the market be a prime article. Whatever it may 
be, let it be good enough to vie with any that 
may be presented and you are always sure to 
get the best if not a profitable price and estab¬ 
lish a reputation that will always command a 
demand for your produce, of whatever nature 
it may be. Every species of marketable prod¬ 
uce should pass through the hands of a com¬ 
petent inspector and its relative quality should 
be branded—prime, first, second or third qual¬ 
ity—and should command a price accordingly. 
There are many farmers who think anything 
that will command some price is good enough 
to sell—a very mistaken idea and one which 
is doing much injury to the producer. Aim 
high in production and produce the best, and 
thereby secure the best paying prices. 
h. a. whittemore. 
Chautauqua Co., N. Y. 
REFLECTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 
WALDO F. BROWN. 
Prospective Changes in Utilizing Corn. 
I believe the near future has in store for us 
some radical changes in the methods of hand¬ 
ling and utilizing the corn crop. The farmers 
of the West, with a few exceptions, have been 
wasting about nine-tenths of their corn fodder; 
but a knowledge of its value is increasing 
from year to year and [especially in years of 
drought, like that of 1887, and new machinery 
is being invented with which to handle the 
crop. I recently received a circular of a 
machine manufactured in the Northwest, 
which husks the corn, and cuts the fodder fine, 
the ears of corn running through a spout into 
a wagon or bin at one side of the machine, 
and the cut fodder being elevated into the mow 
where it is to be stored on the other side. 
Unfortunately the circular is mislaid, but if I 
remember correctly the capacity of the ma¬ 
chine was .300 bushels of corn a day, and the 
price $300. When such a machine is intro¬ 
duced there will be many advantages, for as 
farmers learn the value of corn fodder, more 
of the corn will be cut up, especially as the 
slow process of hand-husking will be super¬ 
seded. In addition, a given space will store 
at least twice as much of cut fodder as of bun¬ 
dles, the stock will eat it cleaner, and what is 
left,will make excellent bedding, as cut stalks 
will absorb liquid like a sponge. 
* # * 
Improvement Needed in Hog Feeding.— 
Farmers are slow to learn and often pay 
dearly for this trait, but I believe the more 
intelligent among them are learning wiser 
methods of feeding swine especially their 
breeding stock. It is not strange that chol¬ 
era made pork production so precarious that 
it has been abandoned in many localities, but 
the wonder is that the genus has not become 
extinct. Doyouaskwhy? Because an omni¬ 
vorous animal which in a state of nature lived 
principally on coarse, bulky and succulent 
food, has for generations been reared on corn 
alone, and the stock grown, especially for 
breeding, has been stuffed and pampered 
more than any other. I am familiar with a 
large number of men who breed large num¬ 
bers of pigs to be sold for breeding, and, 
without exception, they fatten the pigs on 
corn before shipping them. Because one 
shipper does this, the rest think they must do 
so or their pigs will not make so nice a show as 
those of their rivals. A look through the pens 
at any of our large fairs will show that all the 
hogs on exhibition are fat enough for the 
butcher. It is time to “call a halt” in exclu¬ 
sive corn feeding, and fattening of breeding 
hogs. 
* * * 
Suggestions as to Marketing Crops.— 
It often requires more wisdom to market 
crops profitably than to grow good crops. 
There lives in my township a farmer with 200 
acres of rich bottom land who sells many 
thousands of bushels of corn yearly. He has 
now on hand two crops which he could have 
sold in May or June, for 15 cts. a bushel more 
than it will bring now, and with the present 
prospect for corn there will probably be a 
drop of 15 cts. more in the next two 
months. Another neighbor sold last winter 
several hundred bushels of wheat for 20 cents 
a bushel less than he had been offered for it 
previously. Another took wheat to market 
full of chess and weed seeds and was “ docked” 
20 cents a bushel when by running it through 
the fanning-mill he could have made it grade 
No. 2 and received full price. The man who 
goes to market with stock or grain in bad 
condition places himself at the mercy of the 
buyers. The buyer is right, too, in making 
the farmer pay for his bad management; 
for a wagon-load of dirty wheat will spoil a 
car-load of good grain if mixed with it, and 
the buyer dots not want it at any price. 
Make it a rule to put all your crops in good 
condition before you take them to market, and 
then present them fairly to the buyer. 
£l)C Pcntltvij Dan). 
POULTRY NOTES. 
This a good time to have young chicks. If 
the season is favorable they will make fine 
broilers by Christmas, and will then bring a 
good price. Pullets will do better if the 
cockerels are separated from them. The 
breeding season is over and it is better to keep 
the roosters and cockerels from the hens and 
pullets until next spring. Be sure to save 
all the small and imperfect cabbage heads. 
They will be relished by the fowls during the 
winter. See to it that the nests are thorough¬ 
ly cleaned after the hens are through sitting, 
The hay or straw should be renewed, and the 
nests made over before they are fit for the 
laying hens. 
Are you making the most of your home mar¬ 
ket ? Have the local hotels and boarding¬ 
houses been supplied from the city, or do you 
supply them ? It will pay to develop the 
home market. Poultry is usually preferred to 
beef or mutton ; but it is often more difficult 
to obtain. It ought not to be. 
Why do we not have egg-laying contests ? 
Why shouldn’t we have prize hens as well as 
prize cows ? A Stoke Pogis or a Mary Ann of 
St. Lambert among hens might revive the 
drooping interest in fancy fowls. Poultry 
fanciers would do well to get up a boom in ex¬ 
traordinary egg producers. Never mind the 
markets, breed from hens that lay the great¬ 
est number of eggs. Let us have hens that 
will lay, say,300 eggs in a year, no matter about 
the breed or the color of .the feathers or the 
legs. 
Now is the time to get green food for the 
winter. A barrel will do for a silo if you 
cannot get anything better. If clover, pur¬ 
slane, or other green food be packed tightly 
in a barrel and the barrel be headed up tightly 
the contents will keep green for winter. 
poultryman. 
DISINFECTANTS. 
A new era in poultry keeping was marked 
by the introduction of carbolic acid and 
petroleum. Before this time, lime was the 
only thiDg med for disinfecting, but this 
bad to be employed very often to be of any 
avail, as its effects soon die out; but the ad¬ 
dition of crude carbolic acid gives a lasting 
quality and strength. Crude petroleum is an 
excellent disinfectant alone; but using it to 
dilute carbolic acid is the most economical 
way of utiliz’ng the acid. The mixture may 
be sprayed about walls, shelves, etc., and the 
perches may be coated with an old brush. 
These fluids leave a dark yellow stain on the 
walls, etc., kerosene leaves but little stain, and 
for the same purpose it is cleaner. The best 
way to use it is with a pair of spraying 
bellows which will send it all over the building 
in a fine spray, driving it into every corner. 
When the color is not objectionable a little 
carbolic acid may be added to make it more 
effective. No one who has any thing at stake 
in live poultry, need be told of the benefits of 
a liberal use of these articles: they drive away 
disease, lice, and the perch mites, and secure 
to the fowls an endurable existence. 
h. hales. 
<Tlje J^rttenum. 
A NEW BREED. 
A. L. CROSBY. 
Cows of all breeds fall off in milk when feed 
falls off; no general-purpose cow for 
Americans; European conditions render 
such an animal prof table; American con¬ 
ditions make her unprofitable; no profit 
here in feeding a dairy cow for beef. 
The Rural wants to know what breed of 
cattle its Pennsylvania friend has, judging by 
his description of it, on page 580. I do not 
recognize it, and am certain he has an entirely 
new breed from the following remarkable 
point of perfection he claims they have, viz.: 
‘The cows will not shrink in their yield of 
milk, as some do, when th9 feed becomes short 
and dried up.” It would have been nearer the 
truth if he had said, “as all other breeds do.” 
This will be a great boon to American dairy¬ 
men—a cow that will not shrink in her milk 
when “the feed becomes short and dried up.’, 
But the Rural’s friend is evidently a “steer’> 
dairyman, and that fact leads me to doubt the 
value of his assertion that his cows do not 
shrink in their milk on short feed. A steer 
dairyman does not place enough value on the 
milk to make him careful in his investigations 
as to the exact amount produced; his thoughts 
are so divided between beef and milk that he 
is not a fair judge of the latter, as the former 
is apt to receive tbe most consideration. 
The Rural wants to know who can tell 
the breeds that will come nearest to the gen¬ 
eral-purpose animal. Well, there are no 
generalpurpose breeds for this country and 
won’t be until it gets as thickly populated as 
England and Holland. Why can t our peo¬ 
ple understand the solid, cold—or as Hoard’s 
Dairyman puts it, “ice-cold” fact, the frozen 
truth, the frigid, congealed, boiled down (a 
“ bull ” is admissible in speaking of cattle) 
essence of cattle sense, that we as a people 
are not circumstanced like the Europeans. 
They have no millions of acres of grazing land 
where they can grow their beef for the mere 
cost of herding. Take the Hollanders, for in¬ 
stance, they get more for their beef, milk, 
butter and cheese than we do, and they skim 
their milk and make skim cheese and sell the 
latter at a profit; hence they keep a large 
breed of cattle with the beef points well de¬ 
veloped, and giving a large yield of milk. 
They slaughter the cows for beef at five or 
six years of age, the beef bringing a paying 
price, and while the cow is in milk they make 
a profit on the skim milk as well as on the 
cream and can therefore better afford to keep 
a big cow. Here the man who makes skim 
milk cannot make it cheap enough to use pro¬ 
fitably, and labor costing so much more he 
cannot even afford to spend the timo to draw 
poor milk from the cow and furnish storage 
for it in the dairy. There are few farms in 
the thickly settled parts of the East where it 
will pay to grow cattle for beef in competi¬ 
tion with western meat, and cow-beef least of 
all; therefore dairymen want a cow that has 
just enough size— and no more —to give a cer¬ 
tain limited quantity of milk that has a large 
per cent, of solids in it, the quantity and qual¬ 
ity depending upon whether tbe milk is to be 
used whole or made into butter. 
Now where is the profit in this country of 
feeding more weight of cow than is needful to 
give the milk required in the dairy? We 
cannot afford to kill our cows at five or six 
years of age, just in their prime. We must 
keep a good cow as long as her milk will pay 
a good profit, and then sell her for what we 
can get, knowing that we are ahead on the 
profit side of the ledger and also knowing that 
if we attempt to feed 500 or 000 pounds of 
extra weight of cow all the time she is at work 
in the dairy, the proft will grow beautifully 
less, and we will have to get a “general 
purpose ” pocket-book so that it will hold a 
big pile of bills payable and a very smal 
amount of money to pay them with. 
R. N-Y.—It may be fair for us to say that 
the Pennsylvania farmer referred to keeps 
Ayrshire cattle. As we understand it, this 
“ new bred ” is composed of Ayrshire grades. 
HOW MUCH STOCK CAN I WINTER? 
Proportion the stock to the feed; why a sur¬ 
plus of feed is better than a surplus of 
stock at the end of the feeding season;need 
of assorting stock according to the feeding 
capacity and sensitiveness to cold of each. 
This is a very important question to be 
settled upon every farm, and it should be 
settled now. Why at this time? Simply 
because each farmer for himself should make 
an accurate invoice of the food [in sight 
upon the farm, and, if he does not intend to 
buy more, he should thin the live stock down 
so that the numbers to be kept may tally 
properly with the food provided for the ap¬ 
proaching winter months. Stock sold in the 
fall, when in good condition, just off grass, 
will generally bring fair prices, and it will 
be found to be materially better to err in one’s 
estimate in the direction of having a surplus 
of feed than in having a surplus of cattle at 
the close of the winter. The feed will be 
salable, while the cattle hardly will be so 
except at the buyer’s own low figures. Feed 
if not sold, if prudently taken care of, will 
keep, while the loss of one beast or a material 
shrinkage on all should settle the question 
with every faimer as to repeating this 
ruinous sort of live stock husbandry. When 
men cast about toward spriDgfor the purpose 
of buying their cattle, they know very well 
that the intending buyer occupies in this 
case the position of the intending seller who 
has good cattle well fed. In other words, 
within certain limits he can dictate terms. 
Depression in live stock interests has an op¬ 
posite effect to what it should have. I refer to 
the almost invariable neglect of animals on 
the farm when prices range low. Under these 
circumstances it is only the best that are read¬ 
ily salable. When a merchant has a line of 
goods that sell at sight—are in active demand 
—he is indifferent as to whether he keeps them 
under the counter or on top displayed at their 
best, while such as are not in demand require 
to be brushed up and put in an attractive form. 
Hence, farm animals of every sort can receive 
their proper deserts by being carefully assorted 
divided into classes according to the feeding 
capacities of each, and stabled with care, or in 
a measure indifferently, as they show more 
or less sensitiveness and tendency to shrink on 
exposure. A shed open to the south is more 
to some beasts than a warm stable is to others, 
and if the average faimer would discriminate 
• etween his beasts as he does between his po- 
