neo 
THE RURAIj NEW-YOftKEH 
November 23, 
A HEN AND HOME STORY. 
Extracts from the diary of a “Back-to- 
the-LSflder” : 
March 17—We are almost settled at last. 
There is a whole lot of cleaning to be 
done in and about the house, and a lot 
of repairing on barn, stable, henhouse, etc. 
We purchased nine old hens which cost 
me $7.20. I call them Ited-Brahmoth- 
Horns. We want to start a pure breed, 
but we cannot see the cash, and then 1 
think it is rather late in the season to 
have eggs of the breed we want shipped 
some distance, and then hatch, so we have 
decided to get our experience from such 
stock as we can pick up in our neigh¬ 
borhood. 
March 21—Purchased 150 eggs from a 
neighbor to-day and started incubator; had 
some trouble with regulator, but finally got 
it working. 
March 24—We made a mistake starting 
the incubator upstairs near the stovepipe. 
This was the wife’s idea; she thought it 
would require less oil to keep the tempera¬ 
ture up. 1 find that the temperature 
varies so much that it is almost impossible 
to regulate it. Last night it grew so cold 
that in spite of all my efforts to keep the 
temperature up, the thermometer went 
down to 100 degrees. Was up four times 
during the night; am going to move in¬ 
cubator to the cellar. 
March 30—Started to test eggs to-night, 
but the eggs were of so many different 
colors and shades, and the wife was in 
such fear of having good ones thrown out, 
that we finally gave it up and put them 
all back. 
April 12—Chicks are all out (68) ; about 
10 of them are very sickly, do not think 
they will live. Most of the others look 
healthy and strong. 
April 20—Have lost about 15 of the 
chicks; some of them were weak when 
they came out. The wife makes “chicken 
johnny cake” for them; she takes equal 
parts of cornmeal and wheat bran, to 
which she adds some cooking molasses, 
stirs into a thick mass with milk, and 
bakes thoroughly. The chicks seem to be 
very fond of it. We have another in¬ 
cubator full coming out May 6. We are 
hatching the eggs for half the chicks. Same 
neighbor furnishes eggs, while we furnish 
incubator, attention and oil. This looks 
like a cinch for the neighbor, but we con¬ 
sider that the neighbor is contributing 
largely for our experience. 
May 7—Second hatch came out to-day. 
We got 80 chicks to divide between neigh¬ 
bor and ourselves. This is better than I 
had expected; the wife and 1 celebrated 
our success with a chicken supper. 
May 21—Have two Brahmoth-Horns 
sitting on 15 eggs each. Incubator chicks 
aie looking fine; am feeding cracked corn 
and buckwheat to the larger ones. 
June 10—The two old Brahmoth-Horns 
came off the nest to-day with 24 chicks. 
Why are they so much stronger than those 
hatched in tne incubator? 
June 12—Chicks looking pretty good; 
the hen-hatched ones are far ahead of 
the others in point of vigor. We have 95 
chicks all told. I cleaned out the old hen¬ 
house, sprayed thoroughly, and started 
training chicks to go in there to roost, 
excepting those with the hens, which are 
in old-fashioned A-coops of my own con¬ 
struction. (Permit me to say here, that 
in the few years that have passed since 
this diary was originally written, I have 
never found anything better than those 
same old-fashioned coops.) 
June 22—Lost 14 chicks last night. I 
suspected thieves, but if this is the work 
of thieves, why did they take such a small 
number, and anyway, why did not they 
wait until the chicks were larger? I keep 
the poultry house doors locked, windows 
fastened inside, and all holes closed tightly 
at night. 
June 25—Seventeen chickens taken last 
night. This is growing serious; was telling 
neighbor of our losses this morning. Neigh¬ 
bor says, “Look for rats.” 
June 26—To-day I tore up the platform 
on which the chicks roost and ‘feed, and 
then I found the bones of probably the 
greater part of the chickens we lost. I 
have taken a large drygoods box, bored a 
number of holes in the sides, and turned 
it bottom side up in the henhouse, with 
a hole for the chicks to go in ; and every 
night my wife and I spend about 15 min¬ 
utes stuffing chickens in aforesaid hole. 
June 30—This morning when I let the 
chicks out of the box only 44 came out. 
On lifting up the box to find out why the 
others did not come out, I found a large 
hole that had been dug under the box, but 
no signs of chicks—more rats. The poul¬ 
try house was originally built on a founda¬ 
tion made by a ditch, which had been 
filled with stones, on which the founda¬ 
tion walls had been laid, and the space be¬ 
tween the walls had also been filled with 
stones, on which a cement floor had /been 
laid. This floor had cracked and been 
thrown out or pounded up for the hens 
of some prior tenant, and probably this 
old stone foundation is the home of count¬ 
less rats. Acting on the advice of neigh¬ 
bor I have taken the chicken box some 
distance from poultry house, and built a 
yard for the chickens. 
July 7—No more trouble with rats; 
chickens are looking fine. The wife came 
running this morning to tell me that one 
of our largest chickens had a bone in its 
throat. Upon investigation I found that 
he was trying to crow. 
July 20—At this date we have 42 chick¬ 
ens. I have taken the later ones away 
from the hens and put them altogether. I 
have used lime liberally in yard and coops; 
have had but two cases of gapes and they 
recovered. 
August 15—Chickens looking fine. I now 
let them run at large during the day; wife 
says it is wonderful to see them make four 
quarts of cracked corn disappear. We 
feed scalded middlings at morning meal 
and cracked corn at night; their noon 
meal they have to forage for. 
September 5—Chickens are growing won¬ 
derfully. We have decided to keep them 
until about Thanksgiving time. Of course 
what we will gain in extra weight we 
would lose in cost of feed, if we had to 
buy all of it. but we should have quite a 
corn crop. Buckwheat will soon be ready 
to thrash, and there is always a large 
amount of screenings, such as split and 
shrunken kernels, etc. We have quite a 
surplus of sweet corn and many other 
odds and ends, and altogether I think it 
will pay to keep them. 
October 15—Our “chicks” have long 
since outgrown the name. The later, hen- 
hatched chickens have fully “caught up” 
to the earlier, incubator-hatched ones. I 
have decided to drive to the city market 
with the cockerels, making up a one-horse 
load with beans, two pigs, hickory nuts, etc. 
It will be rather a hard journey, but the 
speculators who drive in regularly have 
to make a very large profit, so they say, 
to enable themselves and families to live, 
and we do not feel that we can contribute ! 
to their support at the present time. 
November 13—On the 11th we dressed 
our poultry; it took some time to learn 
how to scald them. I fear we (the wife 
and I) made rather a bad job of it, but 
we will try to remember where we made 
our mistakes so we will not make the 
same mistakes next year. We find, though, 
that gaining knowledge through experience 
on a farm is pretty slow business. Here 
we have to wait a whole year to take ad¬ 
vantage of some little bit of experience. 
However, our poultry did not look so bad. 
Two or three of them which were rather 
badly skinned, we will eat at home. In I 
the afternoon I drew the wagon before the 
door and loaded on my pigs, poultry, etc. 
I had some trouble in fastening on a road 
lamp, and finally, when everything was 
right, the load covered with an old 
poncho which saw service with me in the , 
Spanish-American war, and my chores fin- ! 
ished, it was 8 :30 and my supper had been J 
waiting a long time. After supper and my 
smoke my wife chased me off to bed for a 
nap. She called me at 12:30, when I 
went out and cleaned, fed and harnessed j 
old Bill. It was snowing hard, the snow j 
was already • two inches deep. Here was 
a problem. To transfer my load to a 
sleigh might mean the almost impossible j 
task of hauling it half the distance or i 
more on bare ground. If I were to wait, 
the wind might begin to blow and the 
roads become impassable for either sleigh 
or wagon. I decided to go and take 
chances on getting back. After a cup of 
hot coffee and a light lunch I hitched old 
Bill to the load. Old Bill did not like the 
road lamp; he seemed to think it looked 
too much like an auto business, and Bill 
does not like an automobile nor anything | 
pertaining thereunto. I went in the house 
to put on ray overcoat, and when I came 
out old Bill had vanished, taking the load 
■with him. All that was left was the track 
of the wagon in the snow, which I followed 
out to the roadway and down the hill. 
My state of mind, as I trudged down the 
hill through the blinding storm, expecting 
to find beans, pigs and poultry strewn j 
beside the road and perhaps the wagon 
bottom side up at the bottom of the hill, 
can be better imagined than described. I 
finally found the outfit behind a neighbor’s 
barn; the load, wonderful to state, was 
in good shape, so we lost no time in 
getting started. Soon the snow was blowing 
so hard that the rays of the road lamp 
could penetrate but a few feet. The next 
four miles of road was rather more of a 
down grade, after which we struck a piece 
of State road about six miles in length. 
At the end of this road we strike the 
“Old Plank Road,” which years ago was 
considered the finest road in the country, i 
But I found that the planks had been i 
removed and road-bed was being regraded 
for State road construction. It had now j 
grown much warmer and the snow had , 
become soft, allowing the wheels to cut I 
through into the soft sand, and the snow 
and sand would stick to the wheels and 
fall off in great chunks. Old Bill was 
almost “all in,” and I walked the greater 
part of the remaining eight miles, allowing 
the horse to pick out the best parts of 
the “trail” for himself. Sometimes I would 
get so far behind as to lose sight of the 
wagon, when I would call to Bill to stop 
and wait for me to “ketch up,” and he i 
was only too pleased to wait. Driving | 
down the avenue past the shop where I j 
used to work I saw some of the “boys and ! 
girls” going to work; none of them recog- , 
nized me. I could imagine them saying, I 
“Just look at that poor Rube, driving, | 
probably, half the night through the ; 
storm—cold, wet and hungry. No farm 
for mine.” I 
When I reached the market square (Al¬ 
bany has one of the finest public markets 
in the East) the sun was shining and it 
had grown warm ; there were but few loads 
on the square, which fact enabled me to 
obtain good prices. At 10 A. M. I put old 
Bill in a stable for feed and a much- 
needed rest, while I proceeded to do my 
shopping. At 3 P. M. we started for 
home. When I reached the “hill,” about 
six miles from home, I found that the 
snow had not melted here and that the 
wind had been blowing. The roads were 
badly drifted and this last six miles was 
a slow, heavy pull. I was sure glad when 
I at last saw the light in the window of 
the “old red house on the hill.” And as I 
sat by the hot kitchen stove, after making 
old Bill comfortable for the night, with 
my feet on the hearth, while my wife was 
getting my supper, and opening the several 
packages and bundles, which were the re¬ 
sult of my shopping, while “Billy,” who is 
18 months old, w r as trying to climb on a 
chair looking for candy, I realized as never 
before the truth In the words of the old 
song we all know, “Be it ever so humble, 
there’s no place like home.” a. j. h. 
Muzzle for Orchard Pasturing. 
Is there any horse or cattle muzzle that | 
will permit the animals to graze in an 
orchard without danger to the trees? 1 
have been wanting such a thing for 10 
years, and tried several and found none 
"that prevent eating the leaves off the 
trees, so that we cannot get the benefit 
of pasture in our orange groves. It seems 
very strange to me that there is nothing 
of this kind invented. I never see any¬ 
thing of the kind advertised, and suppose 
there are none, yet such a thing would be 
worth a fortune to the inventor, for such 
a thing would be worth $50 a year to those 
who have groves or orchards, and no other 
pasture. The muzzle must lock short 
when the head is raised from the ground ; 
otherwise stock learn to open it on the 
tree branches. w. a. w. 
Umatilla, Fla. 
We do not know of any such device. It i 
•would be a good thing for orchard pastur¬ 
ing. Has anyone worked out the idea? 
Pull Those Stumps 
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Dept. 33 f Lone Tree, Iowa 
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Down 
