1907. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
381 
Hope Farm Notes 
Poultry Doings. — I have given the 
name of "rooster men” to those gentle¬ 
men who tell big stories about their hens 
and bury the mistakes by night—out be¬ 
hind the barn. I have seen “Snow King,” 
our White Wyandotte rooster, eating the 
oyster shells which belong to his wives, 
and yelling so you could hear him on the 
next hill when one of them laid an egg. 
If the R. I. Red were to whip him, how¬ 
ever, not a crow would you get out of 
him. While men tell large stories about 
their hens, I notice that they say very 
little about great success with incubators. 
Thousands of these machines are sold, 
and I often wonder how people really 
make out with them. We have two, and 
have run them for several years. This 
year the 220-egg machine hatched out 
39 chicks. The 360 machine was started 
and ran perfectly for about 10 days. We 
tested out the infertile eggs, and every¬ 
thing seemed promising for a good hatch. 
On Friday night the incubator seemed 
about as near to a healthy sitting hen as 
you could get. Saturday morning the 
cellar was smoky—either the lamp or the 
drum refused to work. The temperature 
had gone down, but not low enough to 
hurt. That incubator simply balked and 
would not work. We got a new lamp 
but still the smoke poured out. It was 
as bad as a balky horse, a gasoline en¬ 
gine that won’t explode or a pump that 
sucks air. What about those eggs? Two 
nights before we bad raked the neighbor¬ 
hood and found six sitting hens. There 
were several others half way inclined, 
and two of the hen turkeys expressed a 
desire to imitate an incubator. By hard 
crowding we got those eggs under these 
birds and they are there yet. What they 
will come to remains to be seen. If we 
can get that incubator good-natured again 
we will start another batch ; if not we will 
stick to hens. One trouble is that our 
needs have caused the price of sitting 
hens to soar. It seems to be a part of 
human nature to raise the price to the 
limit that people are compelled to pay. 
. . . There are two sets of hen plans 
working out at Hope Farm. Jack and 
Henry want to get into hens on a large 
scale. They work for me, boarding them¬ 
selves, and run their hen business as a 
side line in tbeir own time. I rent them 
buildings and take the manure and chaff 
as rent—the hens run in my orchards. 
Starting with good stock, Jack and Henry 
want to breed up fine flocks of “Reds” 
and Wyandottes. This suits me, as I 
want hens in the orchards. For my own 
part I have a very fine pen of White 
Wyandottes, a good pen of “Reds,” and 
about 50 ordinary birds. Merrill took a 
short poultry course at the Connecticut 
College last Winter, and he will try to 
get as many chicks as possible from my 
best birds. My plan is to hatch all I 
can from the best pens. In the Fall I 
expect to select 50 or 60 of the very finest 
pullets for future breeders—sell the rest 
and buy the best males I can get. I plan 
to keep this up year after year. I think 
there is more in this for me than there 
would be in Winter feeding a large num¬ 
ber. Jack and Henry think they can 
make more feeding for Winter eggs. I 
am doubtful when I figure the cost of 
houses and feed. I think young stock 
better to sell. . . . We have three 
White Holland hen turkeys, having re¬ 
duced our flock to that number. The way 
these hens lay has astonished us. Day 
after day they gave us three eg^s, and 
never less than two. After laying about 
15 eggs each they expressed a desire to 
see what those eggs contained. One of 
them accepted 30 of those incubator eggs 
as if they were her own, and settled down 
upon them in the wood shed where her 
own nest was made. Some of these men 
who growl and sulk when put in to finish 
a disagreeable job which takes them out 
of the limelight ought to stand in our 
wood shed and see Queen settle down on 
the incubator’s failure. “No smoking” 
for her. We are trying to make the other 
hen turkeys see their duty as clearly, 
while old “Champ.” the gobbler, wanders 
around like a man whose women folks 
have all gone visiting. 
Work.— Another week of storm and 
cold! A hard snowstorm April 18 seemed 
about the limit, and when, the next morn¬ 
ing, I saw the barn roof white with 
frost and a thick frozen crust on the 
ground I was ready to bid a long fare¬ 
well to the peach crop. It did not seem 
possible that the buds could be alive yet. 
Strange to say, some of them have more 
lives than a cat. We may have some 
reaches yet. The cold weather held up 
farm work all over our country. We got 
a little plowing done, though I do not 
like to turn ground over too soon and 
have it lump up. The strawberry ground 
was plowed, and we have harrowed it five 
times. I would like to work it five times 
more before planting, but that is impos¬ 
sible. With cultivating and hoeing we 
shall work it at least 16 times this Sum- 
met. I am more and more insistent on 
thorough tillage of a small area rather 
than half culture on a large one. I shall 
get all the plowing I can done early, as I 
rather expect a dry spell to follow this. 
In that case some of our soil will be like 
a brick. I would rather plow it when we 
can and keep the harrows on it for a 
month if need be. As soon as the „sky 
cleared our neighbors got into the ground 
with all the teams they could muster. 
There was a great turning of the soil. 
I saw a number of farmers planting pota¬ 
toes on April 20. I think this was too 
early even in the lighter soils, and this 
will show how late our season is. Our 
chief work is getting our fruit and garden 
crops started. We are not sowing oats 
this Spring—depending for forage on the 
rye and wheat. Strawberry planting be¬ 
gan in earnest April 22—though a few 
plants were set before. 
Adopting Children. —I have been sur¬ 
prised to see how much interest is being 
taken in the plan to find farm homes for 
little children. It pleases me to learn of 
dozens of worthy people who have taken 
these little ones in. A man in Virginia 
writes that he has a magnificent farm 
with a great house on it, which he will 
offer at easy terms to one who will start 
a home for little children. A New York 
man sends me the following clipping: 
Mr. and Mrs. John Shandrow, who own 
a fruit farm near South Haven, Mich., are 
childless, and, having decided to adopt a 
boy. wrote to the Smith Foundling Asylum 
in Minneapolis asking that several children 
he sent for a Summer’s outing, with the 
privilege of choosing from them in case 
they so desired. The institution promptly 
forwarded 22 boys and girls over three years 
of ago. The couple has decided to adopt all 
of them. 
I have not been able to verify this yet. 
Many of such printed stories often turn 
out to be exaggerated. If it should be 
true the world ought to know about Mr. 
and Mrs. Shandrow. Such people do far 
more for humanity than soldiers who win 
bloody fights. People who take these 
little ones and try to make them into 
good citizens are dealing with the Na¬ 
tion’s best asset—raw material. The sol¬ 
diers kill off the finished product—some 
of it pretty well unfinished at that. The 
evil forces which are most likely to tear 
this country apart are not represented by 
foes from abroad, but by spoiled Ameri¬ 
cans—ruined largely by wrong training, 
foolish indulgence and too easy a struggle 
with life. We cannot fight these evils 
with steel or powder and shot, but with 
solid character and independence. These 
things are most likely to be gained in 
country homes, which are the best arsen¬ 
als and forts we have in the land. Talk 
Jlbout your “man behind the gun,” he 
cuts a very poor figure beside the woman 
behind the home. 
Scattering Disease. —This question of 
killing off rats and mice grows like a 
snowball. Now a reader in Michigan 
sends an advertisement of a scheme for . 
spreading a disease among the pests. As 
1 understand it we are to catch a mouse, 
inoculate him with the disease and send 
him back to his family. Their joy at his 
return will be short lived, for they will 
catch the disease and die. Not knowing 
about this I asked Prof. Lipman, of 
New Jersey, about it. He knows more 
about the working of bacteria than they 
do themselves, and this is what he says: 
A number of bacteria have been isolated 
and studied, which can cause epidemic dis¬ 
eases among rats and mice. One of these 
known as mouse typhus or typhoid has been 
found to be very destructive to the rodents, 
and the ravages of other germs have been 
found to be scarcely less effective. You will 
see. therefore, that it is possible to get rid 
of the pests, at least for a time, by inoculat¬ 
ing one or more individuals and thus spread¬ 
ing the disease among them. I know noth¬ 
ing as to the merits of the particular cul¬ 
tures to which you have called my atten¬ 
tion, yet there is nothing extravagant in 
the claim made by the advertisement, and 
it is quite likely that the cultures are all 
right. I do not know whether the dead ani¬ 
mals remaining in the walls and under the 
Iloors would render the use of these cul¬ 
tures objectionable. Theoretically, they 
should be no worse than hydrocyanic acid, 
or other poisons used for the extermination 
of tlie rodents. It seems to me that the cul¬ 
tures may be safely tried in badly infested 
outbuildings. 
I was afraid the mice would “die in 
the bouse”—get into walls or cracks and 
make a nuisance. I do not understand 
that the disease would be in any way harm¬ 
ful to humans. I have no desire to 
scatter disease in this way, yet I believe 
that in the future people will make a 
much greater use of this principle in pro¬ 
tecting their animals and plants. A num¬ 
ber of attempts have been made to destroy 
insects in this way. I have been told there 
is a disease which destroys Potato bugs 
if we could only devise some practical 
way of spreading it among them. When 
I remember what farm science meant to 
us when I was a boy, and what it means 
now, I can well believe the future holds 
wonderful things for those who are to 
live 40 years longer. At the same time 
I realize that science alone would starve 
to death if it were not for practical and 
homely labor. h. w. c. 
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