i5o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
March. 6 
however, transferred to the farm as soon as they 
were independent of artificial heat and shelter, but 
the ducks were not only hatched, but grown and 
killed on this place. The amount of land occupied 
by the dwelling, barn and poultry buildings and 
yards is not over two acres. 
Mr. Pollard says that the foundation of success in this 
business lies in the breeding stock. More failures oc¬ 
cur on account of the breeding stock being weak than 
from any other cause. The best of stock, unless kept 
properly, will soon get weak and worthless. When 
mating breeding ducks in November, he provides a 
drake for every five ducks. Later in the season, 
about the last of May, a drake should have as many 
as six or seven ducks. For breeding, he prefers ducks 
and drakes in their second year to those raised the 
same season, although a part of those used are young 
stock. No ducks are kept, however, longer than two 
or three years. No whole grain is fed the breeding 
ducks. He gives them a mixture composed of three 
parts of wheat bran, three parts corn meal and one 
part beef scraps. One part of a cheap grade of flour 
is also added to hold the mass together. This makes 
it scatter less and prevents much waste. It is mixed 
with hot water in winter to take off the chill, but not 
to cook it. Sound cabbage is also bought and fed, as 
well as boiled‘turnips and clover. Crushed stone or 
giit, the same as is fed to hens, is kept by them all 
the time, as well as crushed oyster shells. In cold 
weather, the ducks are housed at night, but they are 
invariably fed out of doors every day in winter. When 
snow is on the ground, a place is cleared in front of 
the house for this purpose. Eggs are not secured in 
any number until December. Although the ducks are 
allowed the run of their yard during the laying sea¬ 
son, nine-tenths of the eggs are laid 
in the house. They do all their lay¬ 
ing by 10 o’clock in the forenoon, 
after which they are given free access 
to a pond or swimming place. Mr. 
Pollard has tried nest boxes and stalls 
as nests, butsfinds them of no advan¬ 
tage. The ducks are liable to rush 
from one end of the room to the other 
and the whole flock are liable to go 
slam bang against them and pile up 
in them, if£they happen to be in their 
course. The house floor is covered 
with planer shavings, and the ducks 
make their nests right on the floor, 
and less eggs are broken or lost than 
under any other plan followed. Planer 
shavings suit Mr. Pollard best for 
bedding, though they hurt the value 
of the manure. Cotton dirt is excel¬ 
lent, and is, also, of value as manure. 
Running the Incubators. 
Usually, the first incubator is filled 
in January, and the last in the latter 
part of July. He has six 600 egg and 
one 300-egg Monarch incubators in his 
house cellar. As he runs them himself 
and is a careful man, he is not afraid 
to sleep over them and likes to be 
able to run down to them at any time, 
in his slippers, in the middle of winter, instead of 
having to go to a building located away from the 
house. lie has, however, over the lamp of each ma¬ 
chine, an automatic sprinkler that will open and drench 
the machine until turned of? in case it does get on fire. 
He estimates that he gets about 50 ducks from every 
100 eggs put in the machines, not counting the first 
two and last two hatches, which do not usually turn 
out so well. Of the early lots of eggs, sometimes 50 
per cent are fertile and of these about 50 or 60 per 
cent hatch. He runs the machines at 102 degrees, 
and says “ of course they vary some, but if the stock 
is good and 4 the germs strong, the fertile eggs will 
hatch if the temperature is anywhere near right.” 
Rhode Island. samuel cushman. 
WHAT THEY SAY. 
Not a “ Robber Cow” —On page 46, V. E. H. told 
us about his three cows which, in 1806, produced 
$453 26 worth-of milk and butter. One of the cows 
was half Swiss. As there has been some interest in 
this breed of late, we show at Fig. 75 a picture of 
this cow. V.JE.,H.’s comments follow : 
The picture of Jmy half Swiss and half Jersey shown 
at Fig. 75 was taken when she was eight years old 
and had been giving milk 11 months. She doesn’t 
carry her tail all the time as it is in the picture ; the 
clergyman who took the picture said that there was 
a fly there. This cow is from a Swiss bull. She has 
never been weighed. An old farmer, and a good 
judge of cows, last night said that she would weigh 
about 1,200 pounds, and was the handsomest cow he 
ever saw. She has never been tested for butter. 
This picture was taken in September, 1895. About 
two weeks after she calved in March, 1896, she gave 
21 % quarts of milk in one day. Her milk is pretty 
rich, but not equal to her daughter’s, a five-year-old 
three-fourths Jersey that had her fourth calf Novem¬ 
ber 26, 1896. December 10, her milk measured 
quarts. The old cow is due to calve in March, and 
she is giving about four quarts a day now. I feed a 
variety of hay, oat and pea fodder, corn stalks and 
bedding ; for grain, six quarts of shorts and four 
quarts of corn meal a day when in full flow of milk 
and two quarts of shorts when dry. This cow is kind 
and gentle and without fear. She has short, fine hair 
all the year through, and seems very healthy and 
rugged. v. e. h. 
Experiments in a Virginia Orchard. 
On page 2 (January 2) of The R. N.-Y., E. G Lode- 
man described an orchard experiment which has in¬ 
duced me to give my experience. I have a Newtown 
Pippin orchard of 50 acres, on limestone land, 2% 
miles from Winchester, Va. The trees are 26 years 
old. Like the trees experimented on by Prof. Lode- 
man, my orchard had not been plowed for 20 years. 
I have aimed to put on barnyard manure every other 
year, sufficiently heavy to kill the grass as far out as 
the limbs extend and, as a rule, I have succeeded in 
doing so. I would have manured every year, but do 
not make sufficient manure to do so, put it on only 
one-half each year. Until the past three years, my 
apples have not been highly colored, that is, they did 
not have that beautiful blush characteristic of the 
Newtown Pippin. Whenever I have bloom I have 
apples, and no June drop to speak of. Indeed, my 
trees bear too full. 
In the fall of 1894,1 selected two rows of trees across 
my orchard near the center, 40 trees in each row, with 
a view to having the apples more highly colored. I 
scattered by hand as far out as the branches extended, 
10 pounds of muriate of potash and 10 pounds of phos¬ 
phoric acid under each tree, on one of the rows ; on 
the other, 10 pounds of muriate of potash alone. This 
was done in November, 1894. In November, 1895, I 
did the same ; the row receiving the potash and phos¬ 
phoric acid in 1894, again received the same in _1895, 
and the other row was treated the same as in 1894. 
The ground was not broken in either case, but the 
usual quantity of barnyard manure was put upon 
these trees as well as upon all the others in the or¬ 
chard. The crop of apples in 1895, one year after the 
first application of the chemicals, was large ; the trees 
were all-full, those treated as well as those not treated, 
but I could see no difference in the apples. In 1896, 
only a few trees in these two rows, and only a few 
not treated bore much fruit. The trees that were full 
in the rows treated, and those not treated were too 
far apart to allow of any definite conclusion as to re¬ 
sults from the treatment except in one place—one 
tree in each of the rows treated and one in a row not 
treated. These three trees were all full to breaking. 
The soil was exactly alike, apparently, and no differ¬ 
ence was perceptible before or after picking. My 
apples were more highly colored all over the orchard 
last fall than ever before, and I am coming to believe 
that the barnyard manure gives the trees all the plant 
food they need. I could distinguish no difference 
between the foliage on the trees treated and that on 
those not treated. The soil along one-half of the 
rows treated is a sandy loam, then they cross a sandy 
ridge for one-fourth of their distance, and the other 
fourth is a clay loam. All have a clay subsoil. 
Winchester, Va. j. s. L. 
STEEL THAT CONQUERS THE SOIL. 
WHAT TOOLS DO YOU PREFER ? 
A Connecticut Farmer’s Needs. 
Weu3e a variety of tools and implements. Having 
a large farm and a variety of soils and conditions, we 
find it most profitable to have suitable tools, so as to 
economize time. The general character of the soil is 
the sandy loam characteristic of the Connecticut Val¬ 
ley, on which soil one of the finest grades of domestic 
tobacco can be raised, though we don’t raise any of it. 
We have, also, a considerable amount of reclaimed 
bog land ; this is all underdrained and coated with 
sand, and is adapted to raise grass only. This is a 
black, peaty soil, and in wet seasons is heavy and 
mucky, but in dry seasons, is like ashes. There is no 
clay land on this, the east side of the river, but on the 
west side, five miles away, clay is 
found. We have, also, some very 
stony land, but the stones on the 
home farms have mostly been picked 
up and carted off. 
To meet our varying conditions and 
as the result of many tests, we find 
the Syracuse iron-beam chilled plow 
No. 32 the best plow we have ever 
used, for two horses for general use 
on light to medium plowing. For 
heavy plowing, using four horses or 
one yoke of oxen and two horses. 
We have found Wiard’s A admirable 
for plowing our reclaimed land, which 
has to be plowed very deep to secure 
the best results, in permanence of the 
good grasses. To fit the land after 
plowing, we have settled down to 
the use of the Morgan spading har¬ 
row, followed by the Acme harrow. 
These harrows, run first in one di¬ 
rection and afterwards at right angles, 
leave the land as fine as can be de¬ 
sired, though we afterwards run the 
Thomas smoothing harrow over the 
land, which tool we also use for 
harrowing in grass seed. The only 
difference we make in using these har¬ 
rows on different kinds of land is in 
the weight; on very tough sod, the 
weight of the driver is needed ; on spring plowing, 
usually no weight is called for ; on medium land a 
good sized stone laid on the seat fills all requirements. 
When expecting to seed sod land to grass, we roll the 
land first with a heavy iron roller, and manure with 
Kemp’s manure spreader and afterwards run the har¬ 
rows as above stated, until the land is as fine as 
desired, and cutting in the manure. For side-hill 
plowing, I know of nothing better than the Yankee 
swivel plow. 
As for the reasons why these tools suit us best, we 
have tried a variety and ceased using all but these, 
because they do the work at the least expenditure of 
muscular force and in the most satisf actory manner. 
As to tools used by farmers around here, for making 
a seed bed, not many are so thorough as above 
described; they use the Syracuse, Remington and 
Wiard plows, and generally, a disk harrow is found 
and sometimes an Acme harrow or a Thomas smooth¬ 
ing harrow ; also, usually, a light roller made out of 
logs. We find, also, for harrowing fall plowing and 
for a variety of other purposes, sueh as cultivating 
among fruit trees, that a sulky harrow, made by the 
American Harrow Company, is one of the best. This 
machine has, also, a seeder for grain and another for 
grass seed attached and, I think, is a very good im¬ 
plement. THOS J STROUD. 
Connecticut. 
Reversible Plow and Spring-Tooth Harrow 
I do my plowiug with a Syracuse reversible sulky 
plow, and am much pleased with it. I get more and 
better work done with it than I did when I used a 
hand plow. I used a Clark’s Cutaway harrow until 
