43o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
June 26 
SOME DELAWARE NOTES. 
[EDITORIAL correspondence. | 
On a recent visit to Delaware, I found 
that farmers were paying more atten¬ 
tion to poultry than in former years. 
At the farmers’ institutes held last win¬ 
ter, Mr. C. E. Chapman, of New York, 
gave his familiar poultry talk in many 
places, and this seems to have stirred up 
quite a little interest in The Business 
Hen. Mr. E. H. Bancroft, of Camden, 
has just built a large house in which he 
expects to winter several hundred White 
Leghorn hens. This house is built of 
culled oak timber, double boarded with 
six inches of sawdust between the 
boards, thus making a very warm, tight 
building. 
The White Leghorns on this place are 
considerably larger than the standard- 
bred Leghorns. They are large, fine, 
active birds, good layers and exceed¬ 
ingly hardy. Mr. Bancroft says that he 
bought the breeding stock of a man who 
has bred several times with Black Span¬ 
ish. Most of the birds from this cross 
are pure white, although an occasional 
spotted or black bird crops out in breed¬ 
ing. 
I find everywhere complaints about 
poor hatches with incubators. After 
following printed directions with the 
utmost care, not over half a hatch with 
fertile eggs can be obtained. It will be 
interesting for those who are beginning 
the use of incubators, to compare notes 
this season, and give accurate results 
with these machines. Mr. Bancroft uses 
a brooder with the heat above the 
chicks. Our own experience this year, 
has been with the bottom heat, and we 
are so well satisfied with the results, 
that all our new brooders will be fitted 
with heat below the chicks. 
Mr. Bancroft uses a large amount of 
corn in his hen ration. The hens run on 
the Crimson clover, and it is astonishing 
how much they will eat of it. Oar own 
experience with this plant has been that 
the poultry preferred it to any other 
green fodder that we could give them 
and. certainly, the weight of Mr. Ban¬ 
croft’s egg basket will show that Crim¬ 
son clover makes a fine balance with 
corn. One cheap source of meat supply 
on these Delaware poultry farms, is 
found in the horseshoe crabs, which are 
taken from the bay. They are thrown 
into the poultry yard, the hard shells 
smashed through with a hatchet, and 
the hens will pick them clean down to 
the bones. 
Mr. Bancroft fills a large silo each 
year with a mixture of ensilage corn and 
cow peas. This mixture makes excel¬ 
lent ensilage, and gives an increase in 
the milk yield whenever a change is 
made from ensilage composed entirely 
of corn. A large part of the Crimson 
clover on this farm is cut directly into a 
silo early in May. This clover ensilage 
is fed out during the summer, and is all 
the rough forage that the cows receive. 
The cows are never at pasture, but sim¬ 
ply exercise every day in a large barn¬ 
yard. 
Mr. Bancroft regards Alfalfa as the 
most remarkable forage plant of which 
he knows. From five acres of Alfalfa, 
he cutover 20 tons of good hay last year. 
The beauty of this crop is that it may be 
cut again and again during the year, 
while it will remain in good seeding for 
a dozen years or more. 
Mr. Bancroft’s experience with cream 
separators has not been entirely satis¬ 
factory. For many years, he raised 
cream in deep pans set in cold water. 
The cream and butter produced in this 
way were very satisfactory, but hearing 
the good reports from the use of separ¬ 
ators, he determined to give the machine 
a fair trial. An agent of the separator 
company, a skilled dairyman, came to 
the farm and made accurate tests. As a 
result of these tests, it was found that 
the separator produced two per cent 
more butter from the milk than the deep¬ 
setting. It was concluded, however, 
that there was more work connected 
with the separator, and that the work 
must be done at a certain time, regard¬ 
less of other needs. In view of these 
facts, Mr. Bancroft has given up the 
separator, and gone back to the deep 
cold setting. He claims that there is 
really less work about this, that the 
work can be done at odd times when 
nothing else is pressing, and that, on the 
whole, he is satisfied to let others turn 
the separator. I give this bit of experi¬ 
ence because it is out of line with the 
general verdict. It is usually claimed 
that the separator saves work, and gives 
considerably more cream and butter. 
These accurate tests, however, show that 
the increase was only two per cent, 
while taking everything into considera¬ 
tion, Mr. Bancroft’s judgment is that 
there is less labor connected with the 
deep setting. It will be interesting to 
have other dairymen tell what they think 
about this statement, and, if possible, 
give facts and figures to show wherein 
they find the separator ahead of the deep 
cold pail. h. w. c. 
Live Stock Matters 
OATS AND PEAS IN THE SILO. 
WILL THIS SAVE SUCCESSIVE SOWINGS ? 
One of our readers in New York State, wishes 
to know whether he can safely put fodder from 
three or four acres of oats and peas, into the 
bottom of a 10x14 silo. He thinks that, by doing 
this, he can feed the ensilage through the sum¬ 
mer, and thus avoid sowing a succession of oats 
and peas in order to provide an ample supply of 
green fodder. Do you think, from your experi¬ 
ence, that this plan would be satisfactory? 
Would you prefer to sow the oats and peas at in¬ 
tervals, and feed them from the field ? Do you 
think this ensilage would keep perfectly in the 
silo, and be equal to the green fodder cut from 
the field ? 
Prefers Si/o to Soiling. 
If your New York reader has facilities 
for cutting the oats and peas into the 
silo, I think it would pay him better to 
adopt that plan, especially if he can 
thereby make other use of the land 
used. The crop of 3^ acres, if good, 
should fill the 10x14 silo to a depth of 
12 to 15 feet, perhaps more. The greater 
the depth the better. 
The question asked squarely presents 
the issue of the comparative merits of 
the silo vs. soiling. It is a question best 
settled by trial. In my case, after long 
use of soiling with clover, Alfalfa ano 
corn, the silo takes preference by virtue 
of the wonderful availability of Crimson 
clover for filling in May. Sown last 
September with a half bushel winter 
oats per acre, it gives a heavy crop in 
May following ; the ground then growb 
a crop of corn or cow peas for the Au¬ 
gust filling, and is immediately reseeded 
with the Crimson clover and wint< r 
oats. These materials all make gocd 
ensilage and keep well if proper judg¬ 
ment be used as to maturity, condition, 
etc. Whether there be weather showery 
or droughty, hot or cold, Sundays or 
week days, days busy or of leisure, it is 
all the same to owner and cattle. 
“ Do you think this ensilage would 
keep perfectly in the silo, and be equal 
to the green fodder cut from the field ?” 
No ; there is no absolute perfection in 
ensilage, and “ green fodder fresh from 
the field,” may be a little better than 
ensilage. In my experience, it wou.d 
sometimes be better, but oftener not as 
good—certainly less uniform. It has 
been said that the behavior of clover in 
the silo is erratic, uncertain and inex¬ 
plicable. Such has not been the case 
here. Put in at the proper stage of 
maturity, neither too wet nor too dry, 
the results are uniform and satisfactory. 
Delaware. e. h. Bancroft. 
Oat and Pea Ensilage. 
We have put two acres of oats and peas 
into the bottom of our 14 x 14 feet corn 
silo, three different times, I think, and 
intend to do the same this year. Last 
year, the crop was so largely oats, the 
peas not doing well for some cause, 
that we feared we could not exclude the 
air, so we made hay of the surplus not 
fed before the crop matured and stored 
it in the mow. The disadvantages of this 
haymaking are several : Bad weather 
makes curing uncertain. With good 
weather, the cocks occupy the ground 
for a week, perhaps. This week, at this 
season, is very valuable for starting the 
next crop. As soon as cut, and the cur¬ 
ing begins, the green food value de¬ 
teriorates. Vermin eat the oats in the 
mow and the peas shell in handling, so 
that much of the grain is wasted. 
Succession sowing is one of the ex¬ 
pensive necessities of the old-fashioned 
soiling system. Probably some of the 
later sowings are upon ground that has 
lain idle, waiting, since the earliest sow¬ 
ing, and these later sowings will lap 
along too late for some crop which would 
have ample time after the first sowing 
was harvested. Then, too, if the whole 
acreage could be sown at once, it would 
be cheaper than sowing in fragments. 
The only excuse for fragmentary sow¬ 
ing is the economical dovetailing of 
crops. When this cannot be done, frag¬ 
mentary work is an expense and a nuis¬ 
ance. 
While the filling of the silo in early 
July with the oat and pea crop is still 
somewhat experimental, it is becoming, 
year by year, more experimental in the 
detail than in the general idea which it 
gathering support from the success of 
corn filling later. No matter how hot 
the air may be outside, we can keep it 
out of well-tramped ensilage in a tight 
silo. The only trouble is with the open 
top from which we are feeding. In a 
10 x 14 foot silo it were well to covei 
one-half, leaving a 10x7 foot surface to 
feed from. I would say, then, from my 
experience, sow all at once, fill the silo 
at once, and have land clear for the next 
crop. 
We usually begin feeding the green 
oats and peas 10 days or two weeks be¬ 
fore they are ready to cut for the silo. 
{Continued on next vaoe.) 
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