630 
TI-iB RURAL NEW-YORKER 
April 12, 
would help. A Jersey cow makes her record while 
living, but the fox must die to make his, for it lies in 
the selling value of his fur. To the average farmer 
who knows the fox only as a wild animal hiding in 
the woods and making forays upon the poultry flock, 
any plan of identifying a particular animal so as to 
“register” him will seem nonsense. We must re¬ 
member that these black foxes are kept confined in 
yards, and that they are even insured like other 
forms of property. They can be marked by a tag in 
the ear, a tattoo mark, or by filing the teeth. The 
great popularity of the business and the value of 
good specimens compel breeders to use the methods 
and care which are employed with cattle, horses or 
other domestic animals. Next week we may see how 
the foxes are kept. h. vv. c. 
HOME-MADE POWER SPRAYER. 
An account of a home-made sprayer may be of in¬ 
terest to your readers. Not liking hand or horse 
spraying, two years ago I tried to find a power ma¬ 
chine suitable for a small farmer, growing a few 
acres of potatoes and having a hundred trees or 
more. The market contained a number of powerful 
and costly machines, suitable for large orchardists 
and park or forest use, but the little fellow seemed to 
have been overlooked. So it was either make one or 
go without. The pictures, Figs. 167 and 168, show 
the sprayer as used for potatoes and trees. The 
wheels are six feet tread, span two rows of potatoes 
and machine sprays four rows at once, two nozzles 
to a row. When used for trees the shafts are re¬ 
placed by a short tongue and pair of wheels, and a 
tower is put on machine, as shown. The engine is 
3 1 /2 x 5 feet, air cooled, back geared nine times; 
pump 2x5 feet, double-acting. Engine runs 360 
revolutions per minute, and pumps 40 strokes. The 
spray cask holds 52 gallons. The agitator shaft is 
connected to crosshead of pump by crank and link, 
and agitation is thoroughly efficient. Safety valve, 
loaded at 125 pounds, has its overflow piped back to 
cask. Delivery pipe has three-way cock, one opening 
to spray pipe, the other back to cask, so can pump 
materials round and round without pressure, when 
mixing, or when turning at ends of rows, or driving 
from tree to tree. With eight common Vermorel 
nozzles working, the machine will pump 50 gallons 
of clear water through them in 12 minutes. In this 
case about 30 per cent of water pumped goes back into 
cask through safety valve, which indicates that a 
slight increase of speed would enable the pump to 
supply 12 nozzles, so six rows could be sprayed at 
once; or it would supply four lines of hose for spray 
ing trees. The details of this machine are crude, but 
it functions perfectly. The nozzles in front of oper¬ 
ator are handy. The old mower wheels on this sprayer 
are too small; wheels should be 42 or 44 inches in 
diameter. The engine ?s too heavy. This one has 
double the power needed. G. 
HATCHING AND RAISING YOUNG CHICKS. 
Would Mr. Cosgrove give more in detail his methods of 
hatching and rearing young chicks? Does he never use an 
incubator and brooder? IIow would it he possible to 
raise early broilers by any other than the artificial 
method? I desire to increase my flock about 200 pullets 
this year, which means a hatch of some 400 chicks, and 
1 should be very glad to know how he handles this 
number by the natural method. M. J. s. 
Denver, Col. 
I do use the incubator as well as hen, in hatching 
chicks. In raising chicks for early broilers where 
the eggs must be set in January and February it is 
necessary to have brooders and artificial heat, be¬ 
cause it is practically impossible to get enough setting 
hens at that time of the year, to take care of the 
chicks. But I am not in the broiler business, except 
incidentally. I want to raise pullets that will begin 
to lay in October, for November and December bring 
the highest price for eggs. So chicks hatched last 
of March or first week in April is soon enough for 
all the American breeds. Wyandottes, Rocks, R. I. 
Reds, etc. I have had White Wyandottes hatched in 
April lay the last of August—that is occasionally one 
pullet do it—but in six months quite a good many 
would be laying and at seven months practically 
all would be laying. 
But suppose I don’t want to use heated brooders, or 
fireless ones either; how can I get broody hens 
enough to take care of 400 chicks, say? It will take 
20 hens, giving them 20 chicks apiece. I haven’t had 
any difficulty in solving that problem. I have about 
30 broody hens down on my farm now—March 13— 
and some of them have been on the nest two weeks 
now; but I expect to put 360 eggs in my “big” incu¬ 
bator, and set these hens at the same time. After 
seven days I test out all the eggs. By that time one 
can easily detect the dead germs, as well as infertile 
eggs; then I take enough eggs from the hens to 
fill up the incubator and put fresh eggs under the 
hens that have none. That’s all easy, you may say, 
but how do you get so many hens that want to sit 
so easily? 
My answer is, push the hens for egg production 
all you possibly can during the Winter and if they 
are the sitting kind, they will be pretty sure to be¬ 
come broody in the lengthening days of early Spring. 
The hen that has not laid all Winter, and just com¬ 
mences in February or March, will not become 
broody until too late for early chicks. A great deal 
depends on the breed, so far as broodiness is con¬ 
cerned. I think Buff Wyandottes and Rhode Island 
Reds will become broody quicker and stick to it 
longer, than any other breeds. I have a flock of 
Buff Wyandottes that I keep mainly for sitters, have 
no male, don’t breed from them; their eggs go into 
the market egg boxes. About one half of the flock 
are broody now. The details as how to set hens, 
etc., have been gone over so many times that it seems 
superfluous to write it again; and yet it must be re¬ 
membered that every year there are a lot of begin¬ 
ners to whom all this is a mystery. I have two houses 
that I use only for sitting hens. Some of the nests 
are on the ground, some are on a platform, some are 
nailed up against the wall. Why? So that when 
I remove the hens to these houses, I can put them 
in nests located something like where they have been 
sitting. Those that are sitting in the bottom row 
of a stack of nests, go into a similar row in the sitting 
house, those that are sitting in nests up against the 
side of the house, go into nests so located in the 
siting house. I warm the trial eggs, put them in the 
nests, and move the sitters after dark, handling them 
one at a time, and very gently. In this way I have 
very little trouble in making hens sit where I want 
them to. Occasionally some of them will come off 
in the morning and stay off the nest all day, then go 
on at night, but if they do not go on at night of 
their own accord, then I “break them up.” One or 
two days before they are moved, each hen gets a 
thorough dusting with lice powder, again in the mid¬ 
dle of the hatch period, and again two days before 
the eggs are due to hatch. I have very little trouble 
with hen lice. Fill the nest boxes with damp earth, 
to within three or four inches of the top, then put 
a little fine soft hay on the earth, for the nest. Never 
have a deep nest where the hen has to jump down 
on the eggs. All my henhouses have earth floors. 
With the thermometer one degree above zero out¬ 
doors, I filled 14 nest boxes with damp earth dug 
with a shingle, in the middle of the sitting house; 
not a particle of frost in the ground. There is never 
a day in the coldest Winter when I cannot dig down 
as deep as I please in the henhouses, the three or 
four inches of dry earth on top seems to act as a 
blanket keeping out the frost, though ice will form 
an inch thick on the water pails in the same house. 
Handling, feeding and caring for the young chicks 
I would like to go into in some detail, and that would 
make this article too long. So this will be “continued 
in our next.” geo. a. cosgrove. 
SOME SPRAYING NOTES. 
Concerning spraying, it is difficult to offer much 
that is new or informing to experienced orchardists 
who keep abreast with the times and constantly 
avail themselves of the knowledge supplied by the 
various Experiment Stations, colleges of agriculture, 
fruit growers’ conventions and the U. S. Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture at Washington. But beginners 
in fruit growing, who have not yet absorbed, digested 
and tested the great mass of such information are 
often at a loss to know what to do and how to do it. 
DORMANT SPRAYING.—The writer is a firm be- 
in dormant spraying of all fruit trees. It is a sort 
of Spring house-cleaning and to a large extent the 
expense should be charged to insurance account. We 
never know how much trouble we have headed off, 
nor how valuable and efficacious the spraying has 
been unless, of course, check trees, or check rows are 
left on occasion of each spraying and a continual 
course of experimentation be conducted.. As an 
illustration, three years ago we were belated in com¬ 
pleting our dormant spraying until in two orchards 
the peach leaf buds had begun to unfold. Wherever 
they had opened sufficiently to show the leaf tips, 
leaf-curl subsequently developed, but none appeared 
elsewhere. This was a demonstration of what might 
have happened had the dormant spraying been omit¬ 
ted. The dormant spray is also a convenient vehicle 
for a liberal application of lime on the trees. After 
four years’ experience with the use of hydrated lime 
in the spray, I am convinced that the result is bene¬ 
ficial enough to more than pay for the extra expense 
involved. From 25 to 40 pounds of lime to each 100 
gallons of spray is not too much. Coarse nozzles 
should be used. And here it may be well to remark 
that high pressure is not essential in dormant spray¬ 
ing. The main thing is to get on a good coat of the 
spray, and to cover every twig and spur. If the spray 
liquid is well strained, the nozzles will not clog. 
Among the advantages of putting on the lime are 
these. It forms a marker, and if any twigs or 
branches are uncovered that condition is evident 
after the spray has dried. It is a deterrent against 
attacks of the bark-beetle or shot-hole borer, and 
our experience is that it controls that pest. To an 
extent it is also a repellent to the peach borer. It 
is claimed with reason that the whitened trees are 
less affected by the Spring sunshine, reflecting instead 
of absorbing it, anff thereby are held back and 
rendered less liable to damage by later frost. As the 
lime is gradually washed off it improves the condi¬ 
tion of the soil under the trees. 
SELF-BOILED LIME-SULPHUR.—Peach foliage 
aged by the commercial or concentrated lime-sulphur 
solution, unless it is applied in attenuated doses, such 
as 1-200 or 1-300. Peach growers were wellnigh 
helpless against brown rot and scab until the dis¬ 
covery of self-boiled litne-sulphur placed in their 
hands a weapon with which successfully to combat 
those evils. Circular 120, 1910, U. S. Department of 
Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology, contains instruc¬ 
tions for preparing and applying this spray. Also 
Circular No. 27, 1909, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. 
Department of Agriculture In connection with that, 
it may be added that experience in its preparation is 
needed to avoid trouble. One rock to -steer clear of is 
permitting it to cook so long that sulphides are 
formed. When the water on the slaking lime is boil¬ 
ing and the sulphur is added, energetic and constant 
stirring is requisite, until the whole is a creamy paste, 
chrome yellow in color. Any appearance' of reddish 
brown is a signal that cooking must be stopped at once 
by cold water, and cooking 'should not be allowed to 
progress that far. Anyone with gumption will soon 
efcquire the knack, judging by the color and the way 
the combination acts. Two barrels, a stirring paddle 
and a sieve about 20 meshes to the inch constitute all 
the apparatus needed. One barrel is for the actual 
making of the spray paste, and the other for cold 
water, which should be close by so that the water can 
instantly be procured. Self-boiled lime-sulphur does 
not keep well. It is so easily made that only enough 
should be prepared for each day’s spraying. If brown 
rot has not .been previously prevalent it may be asked 
how one is to know whether it threatens. The danger 
signal is twig blight (Monilia), and if it occurs to any 
great extent it would be prudent to send some cuttings 
to an Experiment Station or other competent authority 
for examination and advice. Thorough and continu¬ 
ous agitation is essential. Indeed, that is true in all 
spraying. 
LIOW TO SPRAY.—It may appear trite to say any- 
on this point, and yet every year there are novices who 
need to learn how to handle a spray rod. First, as to 
the rod. This should be ma'de of bamboo with a brass 
lining tube and an efficient cut-off at the base. 
Aluminum for tube lining is unsatisfactory; it is 
too soft to hold a thread, and solder will not stick 
to it. There are times when a straight nozzle is 
preferable, but generally an angle nozzle will be 
much more convenient and effective. With it the 
sprayman can direct spray in different directions, 
under, over, to right or left, by simply turning the 
rod this way or that. When spraying on windy days 
the angle nozzle will be particularly efficacious. Hose 
F^-inch in diameter is large enough, unless with 
power sprayers nozzles on a Y or in cluster are used. 
The very best hose that money can purchase is the 
cheapest in the end. A supply of extras, grip bands, 
couplings, etc., should always be kept on hand. 
When spraying a tree, begin at the base and spray 
up the trunk; then spray each limb with its branches 
and twigs systematically. This reduces to a mini¬ 
mum the chances of skipping any part. Where trees 
are small enough to be sprayed from the ground two 
men, one on each side the sprayer, can spray two 
rows each, or four altogether. If the trees are 20 
feet apart, or less, about 50 feet of hose will be re¬ 
quired for each spray rod. The method is different 
when spraying large trees from the ground and from 
a tower at the same time. One tree at a time is then 
sufficient. 
On calm days, a tree can be sprayed on all sides. 
In windy r weather, much discomfort can be avoided 
by spraying with the wind; i. e. spraying the wind¬ 
ward side of the trees, and then watching for an 
opportunity afforded by a change of the wind to spray 
the opposite side. The sprayer is driven across the 
wind, and the sprayman on the windward side works 
on trees in the rear, to avoid covering the team and 
the man to leeward. If the lie of the land is such 
that the team must go with or against the wind, then 
the spraying is done to the rear when going into the 
wind, and ahead when going with the wind. Of 
course if one wishes to complete the work as he goes 
along and “bucks the wind,” it can be done. But 
men, horses and sprayer will be well covered. Vine¬ 
gar diluted will counteract the irritation occasioned 
by the spray (lime-sulphur). When poisons are used, 
greater caution is necessary. Make it an invariable 
rule to clean pump, hose and spray rods at the con¬ 
clusion of spraying each day. d. h. ayers. 
