1308. 
THIS NKW-YOKKKR 
411 
FERTILITY OF EGGS. 
Would Mr. Cosgrove give suggestions on 
how to feed poultry to get fairly fertile 
eggs at this time of year? I never have 
trouble In Spring but last year early eggs 
hatehed badly. A. N. C. 
New Jersey. 
Fairly fertile eggs in Winter can 
only he got by producing as near as 
may be conditions that prevail in sea¬ 
sons when eggs arc most fertile. Every¬ 
one knows that when the frost is out 
of the ground in Spring and the worms 
come to the surface, the hens have al¬ 
most constant exercise in scratching for 
them; an abundance of fresh meat of 
the tenderest kind, and at the same time 
the new and tender grass furnishes a 
green food, of which the fowls act as 
if they could not get enough, for more 
than half of their waking hours will he 
spent picking at it. Green food for 
hens is in my opinion of much more 
importance than one would at first 
imagine. Chlorophyl, the element 
which gives the green color to vegeta¬ 
tion, has some important office in the 
internal economy of animal life. This 
Winter I have used less cabbage and 
more grass than usual. This cut grass 
when soaked out is as green as growing 
grass; and we have noticed all Winter 
what very rich, dark red yolks the eggs 
have. Roth cabbage and beets are good 
succulent food, but both lack the green 
element. So far ] have written mainly 
for the hens, but fertile eggs are de¬ 
pendent also on the male bird, which 
should be active and in good condition. 
(•ICO. A. COSGROVE. 
KILLING AND SELLING SQUAB BROILERS 
I am making n specialty of poultry, and 
hope to turn a good many hundred prom¬ 
ising 8. C. \V. Leghorn and Wyandotte 
early chicks Into “squab broilers” and their 
larger competitors. I have about 400, 
Home now three-quarter pound. Are squab 
broilers sold (usually) alive or dressed? 
If dressed, what feathers are retained? 
What is the most weight In demand? Just 
how Is the Incision and cut made for 
bleeding and loosening the feathers so as 
to render dry picking expeditious? 1 have 
killed many this way but only semi-occa¬ 
sionally make a success of It. I think pos¬ 
sibly there may be many others waiting 
for the light. w. a. t. 
McKee City, N. J. 
Squab broilers weigh from three- 
fourths to i l / 2 pound each, dressed, 
though the feathers on such small 
chickens weigh but little. They are 
sold alive and dressed, depending on the 
weather, preferences of buyer and expe¬ 
rience of the grower. The easiest way, 
and certainly best for the novice is to 
ship them alive in airy coops, high 
enough so that the birds can stand up¬ 
right without sticking their heads 
through the slats. In warm weather 
they must be shipped either alive or 
iced, and an iced chicken never looks so 
nice as one that is kept dry. If the 
grower is very near market, so that the 
birds can be sold the morning after 
dressing, they may be packed dry in 
quite warm weather, with the bill 
wiped so that no blood shows, and the 
heads neatly wrapped in tissue. Of 
course they must be entirely free from 
animal heat before packing. All 
feathers are removed except those on 
the head. 
Even the most expert are not always 
successful in sticking a chicken in the 
mouth so that the feathers “drop off” 
easily. There arc two essentials: first 
to cut the jugular vein, and next pierce 
the brain, severing the spinal cord, 
paralyzing the nervous system so that 
the feathers arc temporarily loosened. 
After hanging up the bird by the feet 
and locking the wings back by hooking 
the tip of one under the other, hold 
the head securely with left hand, open¬ 
ing the bill with thumb and middle 
finger. Put the knife blade down throat 
just back of the head, and draw it 
across with point touching the bone. 
I bis cuts the jugular vein. Let the bird 
bleed two or three seconds; then put 
point of knife against roof of mouth 
'Old force it into the brain cavity, giv¬ 
ing it a slight turn to sever the spinal 
cord. A fair idea of what must be 
done can be had by studying the head 
of a dead chicken, but if possible one 
should watch an experienced operator 
for a time before doing the work him¬ 
self. Last, and perhaps most important, 
after finding an honest and capable 
market man to handle these squab 
broilers, follow out his instructions as 
to weight, dressing and shipment as 
nearly as possible, and stick to him. If 
lie is the right sort you will make more 
than by dividing the shipments among 
half a dozen. This rule applies also to 
hothouse lambs, mushrooms and many 
other specialties. 
POISONING BIRDS AND ANIMALS. 
1. Will you tell me the best method to 
K<’t rid of pocket gophers? 2. Will you 
advise me how to prevent crows from dig¬ 
ging iip my seed corn? 3. If I soak the 
corn In strychnine is there not great dan¬ 
ger to other animal life? IIow long is the 
grain of corn so treated dangerous If it 
should not sprout or grow? n. b. p. 
Minneapolis, Minn. 
1. The easiest way to get rid of pocket 
gophers Is to poison them by using small 
potatoes and strychnine. The pocket 
gopher, like the mole, does nearly all his 
work under tin* surface of the earth. Un¬ 
like the mole Ills tunnels are too deep to 
allow of pushing or humping up tin* sur¬ 
face earth to make room for his passnge, 
hence tin* earth which Is loosened In tun¬ 
nelling has to be disposed of by making 
side tunnels to the surface. The hills of 
earth so made are a great nuisance In 
meadows, especially if the ground Is stony 
or full of gravel, for In heavy grass the 
hills cannot be seen In time to avoid - run¬ 
ning the mower into them. The gopher 
after throwing up a hill of earth stops up 
the side tunnel from the hill to the main 
tunnel. Ills favorite time for work is 
about sundown, and hi* may be disposed of 
with a shotgun if the person using It: is 
sly enough to get within range without 
being seen while the gopher is busy piling 
up the earth. I have caught hundreds of 
gophers in the ordinary steel traps by dig¬ 
ging back from the freshly made piles of 
earth to the main tunnel and setting the 
trap In the bottom of the tunnel and cov¬ 
ering with a board and earth to shut out 
the light. But the simplest and cheapest 
way Is to use small potatoes (about the 
size of marbles), putting a very small 
crystal of strychnine in each and placing 
It in the gopher tunnel. A small bottle 
of strychnine rightly distributed would 
kill all the gophers in a county. 2. Why 
not feed the crows corn enough so they will 
not want to (mil up the growing plants? 
The Hclentltie bird men say the crows are 
our friends. 3. Corn soaked in strychnine 
would of course be dangerous to any birds 
or animals with an appetltle for corn, and 
probably would never be safe from danger. 
J. M. DRKW. 
On page 288 "Render" wants to know 
how to kill crows. In your reply yon give 
the method used by the New Jersey Ex¬ 
periment Station, In which strychnine was 
recommended. With every respect to the 
New Jersey Experiment Station, i say 
don’t . If you are poisoning small animals, 
such as rats, strychnine is the proper 
poison, but anything that has feathers suc¬ 
cumbs better and quicker to arsenic. Take 
arsenate of soda, which is comparatively 
cheap; take a quart of warm water and 
add as much ns the water will take up. 
Then have your corn in, say a large Mason 
jar, and pour the solution over the corn 
until the corn is covered. Let stand 24 
hours, and then scatter the corn where the 
crows are. I saw some ducks that had 
eaten of rat poison containing strychnine, 
and If you could have seen their spasms 
which continued two and three days before 
they revived, you would not recommend 
strychnine. _ cnicouA. 
Tina Drainage.' —The article *>n ‘tile 
drains by Mr. I'hillips, page 337, Is a good 
one in Ihe main, hut I feel that a timely 
warning might save him hundreds of dol¬ 
lars. Ills distance of 15 feet to I rods 
on each side Is absurd unles It is a com¬ 
pact clay. My brother anil cousin in north- 
cm Ohio have, perhaps, as well drained or 
better drained land than any one else near 
them. I think that they put six rods apart, 
making three rods on each side. But In 
our section we put lo rods. M.v tile strings 
are parallel 80 rods long, lives half way 
and fours other half laid two spades deep, 
and tile almost perfectly. One outlet string 
that tiles the entire 8<i acres north of me 
is a 10-inch tile for 80 rods through my 
hind and put down perhaps 8 V6 to four 
feet. I am told that it would have tiled 
the ground easily for 10 rods on each side. 
1 would suggest to save money that Mr. 
I’hillips put his tile 10 rods apart and 
then, if he find necessary, put another 
string between later, when proved needed. 
If In* decides on the 1 >/, rods each side put 
them six rods apart and then If needed put 
between them; but they will not he needed 
in either case unless a very still' Imper¬ 
vious clay. A four-inch tile will cost same 
to put in ns threes and the price is but 
little more, and the results will he far 
more satisfactory. I put half lives because 
they cost only five cents per rod more than 
fours, usually they cost 10 cents per rod 
more. C. o. DU 1101.8. 
Illinois. 
THE 
CREAM 
SEPARATOR 
AND THE DIFFERENCE IN 
CREAM SEPARATOR ADVERTISING 
All separator advertisements seem very much alike to 
the average reader, who is at a loss what to make of them 
and how best to attempt guessing which may be the best 
machine, where all claim to he the best and all appear to be 
about everything that could be asked for. 
THE EXPLANATION AND THE SOLUTION 
ARE TO 111': FOUND IN THE DIFFERENCE 
BETWEEN DE LAVAL AND OTHER CREAM 
SEP A R ATOR AD V ERTI SING. 
The De Laval Company has always stuck to the old 
fashioned plan of having its advertising written in its own 
offices, by the men who make and sell its machines and 
have been doing so for years, and who know no more about 
advertising than to describe as simply and best they can 
the merit and efficiency of the machines they offer to the 
public. 
Practically every other separator concern of any con¬ 
sequence has its advertising composed and in great part 
“invented” by professional agencies and hired advertising 
writers, located in the big cities, who could not themselves 
tell the difference in looks between a cream separator and 
a corn shcller, and who take up the advertising of every¬ 
thing that comes to them, from needles to automobiles, for 
anybody able to pay for their services, just as does the 
lawyer for any client who comes along, whether the case 
is good or had and the client right or wrong. 
It is up to these professional composers of prose, 
poetry, fiction and romance in an advertising way, and the 
professional artists who work with them in illustrating 
their productions and putting them into showy and at¬ 
tractive shape, with their wide knowledge of what “takes” 
with the public gene.ally, to claim the utmost their prolific 
brains can evoh e for the separators they are retained to 
advertise. 
What these professionalists all do know, or are at any 
rate frst told, of cream separators is that the DE LAVAL 
machines and the advertising descriptive of the DE LAVAL 
machines are the ESTABLISHED STANDARDS by 
which their advertising productions must he measured, and 
MUST ENLARGE upon in some way, or else they will 
stand little show of drawing any business for their patrons. 
As result, the biggest advertising claims arc fre¬ 
quently made for the poorest and trashiest separators. 
The biggest advertising done and the biggest claims made 
are by jobbing and “mail order” concerns who don’t even 
make their own separators at all, but simply buy them 
where they can buy them cheapest, and who are almost 
invariably selling a machine which has already proved a 
business failure once or twice before under a different 
name and a different coat of paint. 
When the DE LAVAL claim was justly made of 
saving $io.- per cow every year for its users one of the 
poorest and cheapest separators ever produced put out a 
claim of saving $15.- in the same way, and since then 
another has come along andl made it $20.- The next may 
as likely make it $25.- 
BU rp IT IS THE MACHINE AND NOT THE 
ADVERTISING THAT SKIMS MILK POORLY 
OR PERFECTLY AND LASTS TWO YEARS 
OR TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE BUYER HAS 
PUT HIS MONEY INTO IT, AND THAT IS THE 
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DE LAVAL AND 
OTHER CREAM SEPARATORS, SMALL AS THE 
DIFFERENCE MAY SEEM IN THE ADVERTISING 
CLAIMS MADE. 
The 1908 DE LAVAL catalogue—to be had for the 
asking—is an educational text book of separator facts, of 
interest to all who read and think for themselves. 
THE DE LAVAL SEPARATOR CO., 
42 E. Madison Street 
CHICAGO 
1213 & 1215 Filbert St. 
PHILADELPHIA 
Drum in & Sacramento Sts 
SAN FRANCISCO 
General Offices: 
74C0RTLANDT ST. 
NEW YORK. 
173-177 William Street 
MONTREAL 
H & 16 Princess Street 
WINNIPEG 
107 First Street 
PORTLAND, OREO. 
