4 i 6 
t: 
earth. Whether we shall ever he able to keep the edgeB as 
perfect as the center, I do not know : I have my doubts. 
But as a factor in dairying I am more than satisfied with 
the silo. So far as the corn crop is concerned, with the 
silo we can harvest it cheaper, preserve it better and realize 
more profit than we could by any of the old methods of 
handling It. The cows like the silage; they thoroughly 
digest it; when fed on it they give increased quantities of 
milk; the cream churns more readily and the butter is of 
superior quality. Ensilage has everytning to recommend 
it, and from my experience I cannot well see how any 
dairyman can do without a silo. ('HAS. R. BEUCH. 
Whitewater, Wis. 
SHOEING OF FARM HORSES AND MULES. 
PROF. R. R. DINWIDDIE. 
(Continued.) 
Shoeing for Lameness and Other Abnormal Con¬ 
ditions of the Feet and Limbs. 
This subject can hardly be treated on general principles, 
as there are so many abnormal conditions which 
give rise to lameness, each of which requires special 
methods of treatment, if not of shoeing. Lameness is a 
manifestation of pain in progression, Hn abnormal gait 
which the afilicted animal assumes in order to avoid, as far 
as possible, the pain which the ordinary movements of 
locomotion excite. Now, by a study of the gait we can ob¬ 
tain a clue to the form of shoe (where shoe is needed) which 
should be used. Where there is an effort to walk on the 
toe high heels will assist this effort, and vice versa. 
First, however, let us see w’hen shoes should be used and 
when not, in cases of lameness. The object of all treat¬ 
ment being in cases of curable lameness to bring about re¬ 
covery in as Bhort a time as possible, the great desideratum 
Is rest and In the majority of cases this is most completely 
obtained without shoes, the animal Itself being of course 
kept up in the stable. In some cases of acute lameness, 
however, which need not be mentioned here, a shoe of 
special form is beneficial. Where the lameness is chronic, 
or incurable, or where it is necessary in cases of curable 
lameness to work the horse, shoeing often constitutes an 
important part of the treatment. 
This can be best illustrated by considering in detail some 
of the most common causes of lameness, with the mode of 
shoeing most suitable for each. 
Brushing, 6pkepv-cut, interfering and over reach¬ 
ing are all terms used to denote a form of injury not very 
common amontf farm animals, in which certain parts of 
one limb are injured by the shoe of the opposite foot. 
Occasionally we have lameness arising from this cause in 
the hind limbs of farm horses, especially when they are 
frequently urged beyond a walk. The injury here is in¬ 
flicted on the inner side of the fetlock, and where shoeing 
is required, can best be obviated by havlug the shoe of the 
opposite foot set further in from the surface of the inner 
quarter. 
(JOHNS are a common cause of lameness. They occur in 
the fore feet near the heels, and are quite generally attri- 
outed to improper shoeing. The position in which they 
are found naturally leads one to this belief. A corn is a 
bruise, or the consequence of undue pressure more or less 
prolonged, and the shoes we find on such horses are well 
adapted for inflicting such an injury. The heel of the 
shoe is more or less directly over the Injured part; it is 
also springy, that is, raised somewhat from the surface of 
the sole which it presses when the weight of the body 
rests on it. Such a shoe is entirely unsuited for a foot 
subject to corns, where the main object ought to be the 
avoidance of pressure over the injured part. This can be 
best effected by a narrow' heeled shoe resting on the wall 
alone at that part. Bar shoes are also frequently em¬ 
ployed temporarily in acute cases. 
FOR LAMENESS FROM “ringbone” we find that the shoe 
to be used varies with the seat of the disease and this 
again is best indicated by the gait of the horse. In the 
fore limbs we generally find the affected animal resting 
more on the heels, while in the hind limbs he walks more 
or less on the toes. This gait, however, is not constant; 
but depends on a part of the joint where the enlargement 
is most manifest. The indications for shoeing are either 
for high or low-heeled shoes, according to the gait, or in 
some cases there should be no shoes at all on the hind feet. 
Navicular arthrites is another cause of lameness 
which too often admits only of palliative treatment, and 
this chiefly has reference to the mode of shoeing. Here, 
also, we can lay down no constant rule; for although the 
position of the diseased process is not subject to much 
variation, yet we find that one horse troubled with this 
disease goes best with low, while another obtains most re¬ 
lief from high heels. Generally, however, we find the toes 
of the shoes most worn, and the best results are obtained 
by having the heels moderatelv high. This is a disease of 
the fore feet exclusively, and is recognized by chronic or 
even intermittent lameness at first, progressive and gener¬ 
ally Incurable. The gait is stubby, there is little knee ac¬ 
tion, but a good deal of stumbling, contracted feet and 
wasted muscles of shoulder and limb. The shoes should 
be frequently changed. In chrouic founder we have 
another intractable form of lameness in which careful shoe¬ 
ing constitutes almost our only remedial measure. This 
results, or is a sequel to, an acute attack of laminitis, that 
is, inflammation of the sensitive structures of the foot. 
It is accompanied, usually, by more or less abnormality in 
shape and direction. This, however, varies very consider¬ 
ably. from an almost natural appearance, in which we can 
only recognize the disease by the gait and history, to that 
condition in which the wall is ridged by parallel rings, the 
toe being thrown forward and the sole convex instead of 
concave, which is its natural condition. Generally, the 
lameness is proportional to the degree of outward deform- 
E RURAL NEW-YORKER 
ity. It is especially great in the case of the so called 
“pumice,” or convex sole, in which the pedal bone is 
separated more or less completely from the wall, and its 
toe presses on the center of the horny sole. 
Chronic Founder, so far as the gait is concerned, is 
familiar to most horse owners. The fore Ret, which are 
most commonly affected, are thrown forward, so that the 
heels strike the ground first, and the whole limb seems 
to be stiffened. It is most common in the fore feet, but 
may occur in all. Shoeing in such cases requires the 
closest attention. In cases of convex sole or “ pumiced 
foot,” we must support the weakened part by means of a 
broad web shoe adapted to the shape of the sole which it 
contacts, but does not press firmly against. It is desirable 
when the sole is thin to interpose a pad of leather between 
it and the shoe. Milder cases will do best on thin-heeled 
shoes: they should be kept as much as possible from road 
work, which is liable to give rise to a second acute attack. 
Club-foot in horses is that condition in which from 
shortening of the flexor tendons the heels are drawn up¬ 
wards and the horse walks on its toes. It is usually a 
result of a sprain of these tendons, which in the course 
of healing have also undergone shortening and often 
thickening. The animal rests that foot on the toe to give 
relief at first as the tendons are thus relaxed. After¬ 
wards, when shortening has occurred, it assumes this gait 
from compulsion. The heels become overgrown from lack 
of wear, while the front surface of the wall is perpendi¬ 
cular, or its natural slope is reversed. In confirmed casesof 
this deformity a high heeled shoe assists this necessary 
method of progression. After the sprained tendons have 
partially recovered and before contraction has taken 
place, this should be prevented by the use of low-heeled 
shoes, with, if necessary, a projection in front. A cer¬ 
tain amount, of exercise daily also tends to prevent short¬ 
ening. Where the hoofs become dry and brittle, so as with 
difficulty to retain the shoe, the best treatment, where it 
can be applied, is to turn such an animal without shoes into 
a soft, wet pasture for as long a period as possible. 
The above include the abnormal conditions which most 
frequently occur in farm horses. I have given the treat¬ 
ment and shoeing which in my experience have been found 
most beneficial. 
LEAVING THE FARM; THE “WILD WEST.” 
A writer upon farming recently made reference to the 
common assertion that the great businessmen of the great 
cities were born upon farms. This writer thinks that 
this truth—that comparatively few farm-raised men have 
become financiers, etc.—has been greatly overworked. 
He further said there were no statistics showing how many 
rtien who forsake farms become glaring sots and stupendous 
failures. 
Young men formerly came here from farms and rural 
districts, imbued probably by the dime novel, with the 
idea of becoming scouts and mighty hunters, who expected 
every shot to tell, and who proposed to kill Indians with 
about the same amount of compunction that would be ac¬ 
corded to killing a rattlesnake. Truth compels me to own 
that on my father’s farm I had somehow imbibed a kindred 
idea. A life of freedom and daring has always had its 
charms for those who have not tried it and I suppose it al¬ 
ways will. 
I would like very much to tell the readers of the It. N.- 
Y. of the three boys who came from country places in the 
Far East, and commenced working on our irrigating 
ditches, and laid up some money. It chanced that they 
were only 17 years of age each. They compared notes, and 
finally set out from Greeley with an old stiff legged white 
mule, which they had bought for *30. They had fire-arms 
and ammunition, and a quantity of salt with which to 
cure elk and deer and wolf skins and beavers’ fur. Their 
sugar, salt, flour, bacon, etc., were enveloped in paper and 
cloth sacks, and bound on i he old mule’s back by winding 
the long picket rope many times over the goods and about 
the animal’s body. The mule sometimes rau, or rather 
walked, back by night, for no amount of beating would 
make him hasten his naturally slow gait. The sacks wore 
out and the eatables began to drop along the road, until 
the boys placed them for better security in their surplus 
clothing. When the pack of supplies careened over, the 
mule refused to budge, and there he stood for hours as im¬ 
movable as Pike’s Peak, till an experienced mountaineer 
came along and showed them what ailed their mule; for 
when the load was readjusted he resumed his journey to¬ 
ward the land of promise. The boys were the joke and 
jest of the sawmill men, who “ filled ’em up ” with blood¬ 
curdling tales. On they went, hiding or running from 
imaginary Indians, and scared out of their seven senses at 
discovering a human skull, once worn by a log driver, and 
dug up by some wild creature. The gunny-sack inscrip¬ 
tion on the tree, placed there by sympathetic triends of the 
drowned man, they took for the black flag of pirates, and 
broke camp and fled in the darkness, without sense enough 
to answer the question: “What should pirates want in 
the heart of the Rocky Mountains at midwinter ?” 
Again they fled at sight of the moccasined foot-prints of 
some log-choppers, and, later still, the long-suffering mule, 
for days deprived of water, avenged his wrongs by giving 
vent to an unearthly roar w'hicli was mistaken for the 
voice of a bear or mountain lion. One of the boys fell a- 
sobbing and the others promised him they would return 
next day. Game was. and generally is, so exceedingly 
scarce that only trained hunters could or can obtain it. 
The boys came home with their feet done up in deer skins 
given them by the choppers and one of them got a deer and 
afterward froze his feet so that he sat in a chair until 
Bpring. Another youthful farmer was seen—I know him 
well—climbing th««mouutatus with a revolver on his right 
hip, another on bis left hip, and a third hanging, like a 
sacred amulet, from around his neck, all to the intense de¬ 
light of the resident mountaineers. 
JUNE 28 
One day in Denver some years since, I saw two stalwart 
fellows from the East dressed in new and fringed buck¬ 
skin. Old-timers who knew the symptoms were laughing 
at the sight. Young men flock from the country places in 
the East to see what our citieR can afford them, and there 
in the presence of the saloon they first lose their money, 
and then, unable to find work, that the lying advertise¬ 
ments have declared so abundant, they become discour¬ 
aged, some become sots, some steal, and many bring up in 
the pen. 
On visiting the penitentiary some years ago, I found 
there were 815 convicts. Of these 164 were tinder 25 years 
of age, and nine under 17. Mahy of them are in prison 
under assumed names. Many are handsome, intelligent 
and innocent-looking. Many are more unfortunate than 
vicious. Take it altogether, I see too many young men 
hastening from the farm to the city and country of the new 
West, and making shipwreck of life, to consider the move a 
general success. 
For my own part, the older I grow the more I am inclined 
to stick to the soil. To teach a school is to poison the blood 
with bad air, and to take most of the true vim out of life. 
There is no weariness like brain weariness. 
In the good time coming, when men comprehend that the 
tiller of the soil lives best of all (or may); that be has the 
best appetite, the best sleep, the best offspring; that great 
wealth is a snare to catch a man’s liberty, spoil his sleep, 
ruin his children and shorten his life, then the small farmer 
and gardener with his fruits, flowers, vegetables, cow, 
fowls and eggs, will be the truly independent man he has 
been represented. 0< H * 
Greeley, Colorado. 
POTASH IN FERTILIZERS. 
Many questions are asked fertilizer agents regarding the 
form in which potash exists iu the fertilizer—whether the 
amount represented by the percentage given is all avail¬ 
able or not; what actual potash means, etc. In the pre¬ 
paration of complete fertilizers the potash is the last in¬ 
gredient added. The phosphates have been previously 
treated with sulphuric acid to render them soluble, and, 
in most cases, free sulphuric acid still exists in the fertil¬ 
izer when the potash is added, and with this it might com¬ 
bine to form sulphate of potash. Then, too, the potash is 
often added to the fertilizer in the form of sulphate, or a 
mixture of sulphate and muriate, as in kainit; hence it is 
quite likely that the potash exists in the fertilizer as sul¬ 
phate, and what is not sulphate is probably muriate of 
potash. Both forms are readily soluble in water; iu fact, 
all forms of potash, except the double silicate, are soluble 
in water, and, as the silicates of potash probably do not 
often exist iu the fertilizer, the potash present may be said 
to be available; at least, the per cent, reported will be 
available, as the chemist reports only what he has dis¬ 
solved out by boiling the fertilizer 10 minutes in water. 
By actual potash is meant the oxide of potassium K» O, 
and this form does not exist in the fertilizer. Iu whatever 
combination the potash may exist in the fertilizer the 
amount that it will figure up in the form of K, O is the 
amount that is of special value. 
It might be supposed, since nearly all forms of potash 
are so readily soluble in water, that when applied to the 
soil in the fertilizer they would be easily washed away by 
rains and thus be lost. We are apt to regard the forms of 
vegetable and animal life that we find in the world as 
almost perfect creations or developments, and we marvel 
at their beautiful adaptations for the parts they are ex¬ 
pected to play in the drama of existence; while we look 
upon the soil as a hit and-miss affair made up by the dis¬ 
integration and waste of other forms. But could we ex¬ 
amine it in its workings and see the nicety with whieh in 
this laboratory the chemical combinations are made look¬ 
ing to the most economic use of all available material, we 
would liud here, as we might with reason suppose, the 
greatest marvel of all; for upon the soil the other forms de¬ 
pend for their life and beauty. 
We found in the article in a late Rural on “Soluble 
Phosphoric Acid ” that, after it had been dissolved by the 
moisture of the earth and had passed out a short distance 
through the soil, it then combined with more lime and re¬ 
verted to a form in which it would remain fixed iu the soil 
and would not be washed away. So with the potash; 
when the fertilizer is sown a little particle of potash 
strikes the ground and is dissolved by its moisture and 
would in that condition be ready to pour through the soli 
and possibly eventually out of it; but the silicates of the 
soil at once take it in charge, forming a nearly insoluble 
double silicate aud holdiug it fast for the use of crops. 
We sometimes think that it does this a little too quickly, 
and wish that it would allow the potash to pass a little 
further into the soil so that it would be more evenly dis¬ 
tributed before It is locked up as a double silicate. But as 
we trust and admire the little Venus’s fly-trap plant iu its 
plan and methods of work iu catching and utilizing some 
of its food, so we will trust and admire the soil in its 
workings. 
Potash is generally applied to the fertilizer either in the 
form of impure muriate of potash containing about 80 per 
cent, of pure muriate, which is equivalent to 50 per cent, 
of actual potash, K jO, or in the form of kainit, a mixture 
of impure muriate and sulphateof potash, containing about 
14 per cent, of actual potash; or, iu the form of sulphate of 
potash, containing about 40 per cent, of actual potash. 
Nitrate of potash may sometimes be used, but as yet is too 
costly for use in ordinary fertilizers. Where much muriate 
of potash is used in fertilizers for some crops, such as 
tobacco, sugar beets and potatoes, the chlorine of the com¬ 
pound, it is claimed, would be injurious ; but for ordinary 
grain crops the small amount of chlorine present would prob¬ 
ably not be injurious and if the muriate of potash remains 
in tne fertilizer as muriate, It would be of somewhat more 
value thau other compouuds of potash, as the muriate of 
