1906. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
367 
RADICAL VIEWS ON SEED CORN . 
. Many things taught and practiceed at this time are 
not consistent, and must very naturally rotate against 
the success of our future corn culture. Corn growers 
have always aimed to grow large ears, and usually 
large ears demand large stalks, and both insist on 
having good ground to grow in, which is virtually con¬ 
sistent. But the inconsistency lies very often on the 
part of the grower in trying to make the soil and cli¬ 
mate do more than is possible in thin, rather unpro¬ 
ductive soil, and varieties of corn that require long 
seasons to grow and mature in. While l have been 
in the cornfields of eastern Ohio ever since the year 
1859, when the frost killed both wheat and corn dead 
as a stone June 5 I am yet unable to diagnose some 
things attendant with the growth and development of 
a crop of corn. Experience teaches me that the large 
bulky chaffy ear is not desirable for seed. Usually 
such ears have grown under conditions that have 
forced this large growth of ear by being well apart 
from other stalks, but when planted say three stalks 
in the hill cannot, nor will not, develop into nearly so 
large an ear as the parent one, and at the same time 
partake of the chaffiness of its ancestry. For years it 
has been our method to cling closely to average points 
in selecting for ears to plant, and we have found it 
pays. Varieties that grow late and become bulky must 
be cut quite green, then husked late, and must be dried 
out by artificial heat, and they cannot be relied on for 
permanent cvery-year yields of safely matured ears. 
The eye is the safest guide in the selection of ears 
for seed. Several things appeal so forcibly to looks 
that one cannot get everything to figure together so as 
to secure largeness and perfection at the 
same time. 
If I have ears that weigh one pound 
each and plant the grain from them hop¬ 
ing to get three stalks and ears of the 
same weight on each stalk for every 3 J A 
feet, I can scarcely expect such a return, 
for I would have a phenomenal yield 
of 150 bushels of 70-pound corn, and 
with one barren stalk or only two in 
each hill 100 bushels per acre, or 50 
bushels with one stalk per hill. When I 
read the past year’s report that the 
average yield in the States was a little 
less than 00 bushels, I resolve that there 
is something radically wrong. As long 
as corn growers persist in using over¬ 
grown ears of corn, just so long will 
they produce unsatisfactory yields and 
quality in their annual crops. I have 
found this true in a long line of work 
m our own cornfields. The ear of corn 
that will measure nine to 10 inches in 
length and has 16 rows of fair average- 
sized grains on it with broad points to 
insure vigorous germs, and will weigh 
from eight, 10, 12 ounces per ear, is 
large enough to work on for a first- 
class crop of corn. 
It is average the grower wants to 
work for, not a few large ears and a 
number of small ones. I have found, 
by selecting average ears that mature every year in 
good season, that I get an increase of the same sized 
ears and a safe reduction in the number of small ones. 
Also, I find that there has been a marked increase in 
yield per acre as these conditions occur. For these 
reasons a variety of corn treated in this way, when 
planted in other localities, takes good care of itself 
under either adverse or favorable conditions, and al¬ 
ways gives good account of itself. Corn of this char¬ 
acter does not need artificial heat to put it into condi¬ 
tion for reliable seed. If stored where a current of 
air can circulate through and about it will insure 
satisfactory conditions for next year’s seed. If experi¬ 
ence is a practical teacher constant practice has taught 
me that this is true. The cause of poor seed comes 
from imperfect maturity and possible fermentation 
from excess of moisture in both grain and cob, or such 
corn being full of moisture in hard freezing weather. 
Most of this trouble comes from greed in the hands 
of the grower, through the desire to get big yields in 
bulky ears, resulting in many cases of worse than use¬ 
less seed. The stalk doubtless is indicative of the cob 
size of ears of corn, but the number and size of blades 
are surer indications of the ability of the plant to ma¬ 
ture the ear into a perfectly rounded-out ear. I do 
not select seed that will give too large a stalk, but 
rather an average that will give an ear that the blades 
will fill out in a short period with starches and sugars, 
and force out the excess of moisture that nature in¬ 
tended should go into the air rather than into the crib. 
V hen we understand that most of the starches are 
put into the grain at the closing-up days of its ma¬ 
turity, then will we do better in the selection of seed 
from those enterprising plants that form lots of broad, 
long blades ready for quick work when the sun’s rays 
begin to slant even at mid-day. I am not speaking 
now of corn breeding. The theory as it is being ex¬ 
pounded is all right, but the average farmer does not 
need to expend time and energy at it. What he wants 
to do is to get on the safe side in selecting seed that 
will insure him just what he wants to get out of it. I 
do not want to be understood as saying that farmers 
should not take good care of their corn for seed; not 
at all, but I do want to force upon them the idea of 
growing a line of corn that will grow and mature in 
time to become hard and sound enough so that it will 
stand any amount of freezing, yet grow as good as the 
best. It has been demonstrated that fully matured corn 
has withstood 300 degrees of cold in liquid air and 
germinated just as well as that which had never been 
exposed to a freeze. 
I have been raising corn for 27 years on this farm, 
and never have I failed to get our corn to germinate, 
and our seed is simply air-dried, and while kept dry is 
never put into warm quarters. There is little common 
sense in testing corn for germination by the usual 
method where seed is exposed to the most favorable 
conditions, when much of the same seed exposed to 
the cold wet inclemencies of the weather and soil that 
many times occur in planting season would not germi¬ 
nate. I long ago ceased the germinating test, but de¬ 
pend upon the eye in selecting ears, both for vigor and 
yield and have always come out on the safe side. I 
am aware that what this article contains is much of it 
adverse to what is commonly being taught regarding 
the science of selection of seed corn, and doubtless 
will be severely criticised. But the stuff is on hand to 
prove for itself, for I grow corn, not the class that has 
GROWTH OF RED PINE. Fig. 148. See Ruralisms, Page 372 
to be jollied and caressed from start to finish to get it 
to grow and mature, but solid sound ears that weigh 
Well. GEO. E. SCOTT. 
Ohio. 
COSGROVE'S MARCH POULTRY REPORT. 
March 1.—Received check to-day for 720 eggs to set. 
March 2 my small incubator hatched 47 chicks; 16 eggs 
had chicks in ready to hatch, but dead in the shell. 
This poor hatch is partly my fault, as I went to ex¬ 
perimenting with the machine. I cut out the strawboard 
lining of the bottom and bored a dozen three-quarter- 
inch holes through the bottom boards, then stopped up 
the slots that let the air back to the heater, expecting 
the vitiated air to go out through the holes I had bored. 
As the latest style of this machine has the bottom 
hinged at one side so the whole bottom can drop down, 
I thought I was on the right track, but the hatch does 
not look like it. I have never been able to get such 
hatches out of incubators as the catalogues report; 
50 to 60 per cent of the fertile eggs is all I can average. 
With me the hen beats the machine every time. 
March 7.-1,309 eggs laid this week, a gain of 168 over 
last week. I am using animal meal now in the mash, 
instead of beef scraps, also putting in two quarts of 
fine charcoal. The bowel trouble has disappeared, and 
the increased egg yield and the bright red heads of 
the fowls show that the feeding is all right. I am 
using a large quantity of the cut rowen hay in the 
mash, so that it is about half hay. Once in four or 
five days I boil 10 to 12 quarts of small potatoes, mash 
while hot, stir in salt and animal meal, pour in a pail 
of warm skim-milk, and use enough middlings, corn- 
meal and bran to make it dry and crumbly. Omit the 
hay when using the potatoes. 
March 14.—1,430 eggs received this week, a gain of 
111 over last week; 233 eggs laid on the 12th is the top 
notch to date. I his has been a disagreeable week, 
cloudy, rain, snow, no sunshine to speak of, culminating 
to-day (March 15) in what looks as if it would be the 
biggest snow of the Winter. It has snowed all day, 
a fine snow dry as sand; thermometer 12 below freez¬ 
ing point. Eggs for hatching have to be collected every 
two hours; have brought in 119 to-day. We had two 
clear days, then snow again every day until the 21st; 
more snow on the ground now than at any time this 
Winter and a heavy crust of ice on the snow. I just 
heard that a friend in Tolland turned up his lamps so 
high to keep the chicks warm on the day of the big 
snow that he burnt up the brooder, chicks, brooder 
house and all; and another friend in same town burnt 
up two brooders and chicks in same way. This is 
tough luck, and I am truly sorry. Two of my first 
chicks have died; the rest are lively as crickets and 
growing like weeds. After feeding hard-boiled eggs 
and rolled oats chopped together for first three or four 
days, I bake a cake composed of two quarts each corn- 
meal and bran, one-half pint fine charcoal, a teaspoon 
salt, two teaspoons baking soda; dissolve salt and soda 
in enough warm water to wet the meal and bran into 
a rather dry mash, then bake it for 2 x / 2 hours. This 
cake is not sticky, but will crumble in the fingers, and 
my chicks eat it greedily. I have had no bowel trouble 
among them. 
March 21.—1,399 eggs laid this week, 21 less than last 
week, but quite a number of hens arc broody. On the 
19th four hens hatched 27 chicks, but killed five 
in the nests. The 22 left are bright and smart. 
I have a house 6 x 10 feet I purpose for 
setters; two rows of nests will hold 15 
hens. The dry earth floor makes a good 
dusting place, and with feed and water 
by them, and no laying hens to dis¬ 
turb, they can come off and eat and 
wallow and go back when they choose. 
They do not always go back on their 
own nests, but that makes no difference; 
as long as all the eggs are covered it is 
all right. I look in two or three times 
a day to see that two hens do not get on 
the same nest, and leave one lot of 
eggs uncovered, and that is about all 
the care needed until they begin to 
hatch. As fast as the chicks are well 
dried off I put them in a basket and 
take to the house, because I find if a 
chick gets out from under its mother 
and begins to peep, it disturbs all the 
other hens; sometimes two or three 
hens will leave their nests to go to see 
what ails that chick. So it is quite 
important where a lot of hens are sit¬ 
ting in same room, that the chicks 
should be removed often until the hatch 
is over. 
March 31.—1,975 eggs in the last 10 
days, making 6.093 laid this month. 
With me March is always the month in 
which the greatest number of eggs is 
produced, because from now on there 
will be a constant lugging off to prison of broody hens 
all Summer long, to break them up. I frequently have 
40 to 50 at a time shut up. If we could only get a 
breed as good for eggs and market as the White Wyan- 
dottes, that wouldn’t want to sit, we would have an 
ideal fowl. 
Receipts and expenditures for the month have been 
as follows: 
Received for market eggs—210 dozens.$ 44.10 
Received for eggs to set. 97.95 
Paid for grain. 41.70 
Net profit .$100.29 
Price of eggs has been 20, 21, and 20 cents. Some 
correspondents have asked for more detail as to kinds 
of grain fed, quantities and prices: 
900 pounds wheat.$ 13.10 
000 pounds cracked corn. 6.20 
700 pounds barley. 9.10 
16 pounds oats. 6.70 
200 pounds middlings. 2.28 
200 pounds cornmeal. 2.07 
200 pounds oyster shells. 1.20 
50 pounds animal meal. 1.05 
Total .$ 41.76 
Tins is all the grain bought, but not all the grain fed, 
as there was bran and other grain on hand at the be¬ 
ginning of the month, as part of the above will be left 
to feed out in April. The demand for eggs to set has 
been greater than usual and in my opinion more atten¬ 
tion is being paid to poultry matters throughout the 
country than ever before. geo. a. cosgrove. 
Keep after them ; bad fence wire, “express robbers” and 
the rest of them. I just received a small package of seed 
corn shipped from Punxsutawney to Brockwayviile, about 
27 miles on main line railroad: package weighs 614 pounds; 
cost 20 cents: expressage 30 cents! Seventeen years ago I 
had a Winchester rifle shipped from Boston. Mass., to / ' 
Ridgway. Pa. : expressage 62 cents; quite a difference. 
Brockwayviile, Pa. j. g. w. 
