764 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
./une 14, 
SAVING LABOR LIFTING GRAIN. 
When it comes to saving labor, I be¬ 
lieve that George A. Cosgrove’s new 
poultry house beats anything I have ever 
seen. Most of the features are already 
more or less familiar to the readers of 
The Rural New-Yorker, but the ar¬ 
rangement of the grain bin was some¬ 
thing new, at least to me. Mr. Cosgrove 
frankly admits that he doesn’t enjoy 
lifting bags of grain as well as he did 
15 years ago, so he has simply cut that 
form of activity right out of his chicken 
business. To accomplish this he has 
built his grain bin in one end of the 
henhouse, with a horizontal door opening 
PLATFORM FOR UNLOADING 
GRAIN. Fig. 269. 
out and downwards. A pair of hinged 
brackets hold this door in a level posi¬ 
tion just at the height of the floor of his 
business wagon. When the wagonload of 
grain comes home from the station, it is 
backed up to this platform, and dumped 
into the bins without lifting. A narrow 
weather strip across the top, and some 
patent roofing the rest of the way down 
keep out all driving storms. Mr. Cos¬ 
grove says that a season's use has not 
suggested any modification, and he rec¬ 
ommends the device to other poultrymen, 
even if they have not achieved the dis¬ 
tinction of becoming great grandfathers. 
CIIRISTOrilER M. GALLUP. 
THE “ GOOD PHYSICIAN.” 
Often I notice you advise your readers 
to consult a good physician when in need 
of treatment for disease. Of course no 
one should think of depending on patent 
medicines, or the many quacks, but really 
the good, honest physician is about as 
few and far between as honest politicians, 
policemen or commission merchants, yes, 
and lawyers. Years ago they were edu¬ 
cated to cure and relieve disease. Now 
the important aprt of a medical college’s 
teaching is how to get the most money 
possible out of the doctor’s victims. And 
the doctors are not the only ones. One 
can get as beautifully trimmed by one 
of our good physicians of to-day as by 
any other expert on earth. There are 
many excellent and harmless remedies, 
like soda for indigestion, known and used 
by many. R. 
Connecticut. 
No, I can’t quite agree with you, 
neighbor, that the really good and honest 
physician is as rare as you intimate; 
neither do I think that honest policemen, 
lawyers, or even politicians are hard to 
find. But as to physicians, I have lived 
and worked with them for years, and I 
think I know the craft. Did you ever 
stop to think that most men prefer to be 
honest, and that many whose work may 
not always bear the spotlight are as hon¬ 
est as they dare to be? Cowardly per¬ 
haps, and sometimes dishonest as a re¬ 
sult of that cowardice rather than from 
any innate lack of honor; rather a de¬ 
ficiency in the moral courage which en¬ 
ables men to face the music, even though 
it be playing a dirge instead of a quick¬ 
step. Rascals there are in the medical 
profession, plenty of them, more than a 
plenty; but they do not make the bulk, 
any more than they do in any other re¬ 
sponsible calling in life. Your physician 
knows that you expect much of him; he 
also realizes, if he is well trained, that 
his power to do what you expect is lim¬ 
ited, far more limited, probably, than you 
know, but the support of his family de¬ 
pends upon his power to retain your con¬ 
fidence and patronage. How much of his 
limitation dare he reveal to you? Not 
much; he would like to tell you frankly, 
many times, that what you expect of him 
is impossible; the art has not yet been 
revealed to man, but he knows your anxi¬ 
ety and your ignorance, and also that all 
about him are irresponsible physicians 
and blatant quacks ready with their ar¬ 
rogant pretensions to promise anything; 
they are lying; he knows that they are 
lying; but he also knows that you do not 
know it, and that unless he professes as 
much as they pretend, your confidence in 
him will be weakened and your patronage 
probably lost. He should, of course, be 
always frank with you, and if need be, 
watch you take your family to his less 
honorable and scrupulous competitor; 
but he doesn’t always, would you? 
M. B. D. 
BUILDING CESSPOOL ; IMPROVING MILK. 
1. I think I saw in The R. N.-Y. a 
few months ago, the best way to build 
a cesspool for bathroom, but cannot find 
it. Can you give me the idea? 2. I 
have a well-bred herd of Holstein cows 
which test %% fat. Is there any feed 
that can be fed to this herd to make their 
test better in butter fat? C. L. M. 
Hillsdale, N. Y. 
A cesspool is simply a dry well, pref¬ 
erably about four feet across and eight 
or 10 feet deep, stoned up without mor¬ 
tar to within a foot or two of the sur¬ 
face, and covered with earth to the 
ground level. If built round less care 
need be used in laying the wall, as the 
pressure of the earth will then help to 
hold it in place and considerable inter¬ 
stices may be left between the stones. 
In gravelly soil where it need not be 
built near wells such cesspools will care 
for the sewage from a house and are 
very satisfactory. In impervious clay 
or loam soils septic tanks are much su¬ 
perior and while much more expensive 
to build can be used where a cesspool 
would be entirely impracticable. These 
have been fully discussed in recent issues 
of The R. N.-Y. 
2. The percentage of butter fat in a 
cow’s milk cannot, be materially in¬ 
creased by any method of feeding. A 
poorly nourished cow, will increase her 
percentage of butter fat slightly with 
good feed but after reaching her normal 
level will show only such changes as 
always accompany the different periods 
of lactation. It is difficult to convince 
many dairymen that butter fat cannot 
be fed into cow’s milk, but thorough 
tests have shown this to be impossible, 
with the slight exception above noted. 
M. B. D. 
LEGHORN BROWN EGGS. 
All your readers are no doubt follow¬ 
ing Mr. Cosgrove’s articles on the Storrs 
contest with the greatest interest. As 
for Mr. J. H. Robinson’s exception to 
the article of March 15, which J. H. It. 
published in “Farm Poultry,” it looks 
like mere patriotic “guff,” because Eng¬ 
lish birds have got the goods, or else 
an editorial lay for the sake of arous¬ 
ing controversy. Most of us must agree 
with Mr. Cosgrove, that it would be a 
good thing to get some of that Barron 
or Cam strain into our White Leghorns. 
But here comes the rub: those pullets 
do not lay consistently true to colot-. 
They produce numerous brown shaded 
eggs, so that the dead chalk white shell 
is rather the exception. When supply¬ 
ing the New York market, what’s to be 
done with brown eggs except ship them 
as such, and accept something below 
the top price? So it seems to be a 
choice—import the winning strain with 
the chance of getting more eggs (shaded), 
or stick to the American strain with 
chalk white eggs and fewer of them. 
n. w. M. 
N. W. M. refers above to a nine- 
column article in the April number of 
Farm Poultry in which Mr. Robinson 
quotes the part of my article in the 
March 15 R. N.-Y. advising American 
breeders of White Leghorns “to get some 
of the good laying blood of Mr. Bar¬ 
ron’s stock into their fowls, and by trap¬ 
nesting, and breeding for vitality as 
well, bring up our flocks so that we 
will not have to take second place in 
any competition.” Mr. Robinson says: 
“This statement is one of those mix¬ 
tures of truth and error that lead the 
novice astray.” And he further states 
that “the good ‘laying blood’ in them is 
plainly no stronger than in numerous 
other good laying stocks.” How does 
Mr. Robinson know that it is not? It 
seems to me that statement is pure as¬ 
sumption on his part, He assumes that 
it was the conditioning of the English 
birds, the “getting them ready to make 
a flying start,” at a certain time, that 
gives them the advantage they hold over 
the American birds. 
In the next paragraph Mr. Robinson 
insinuates—without making a direct 
statement—that the English birds are 
not pullets, but hens, and to give this 
force, he says “that the three-year records 
of White Leghorns at Cornell indicate 
that the second year is, as a rule, the 
year of heaviest egg production for 
White Leghorns.” Here Mr. Robinson 
makes a direct mis-statement; it is not 
true that the three-year records at Cor¬ 
nell show that White Leghorns, “as a 
rule” lay more eggs the second year; in 
fact, it is very exceptional for them to 
do so. There have been a few cases 
where the birds increased the egg out¬ 
put for three years, laying the greatest 
number the third year. In counting the 
years, I mean the years from the time 
the first egg was laid, not the years from 
the day the chick was hatched. I have 
a letter from Prof. Rice in which he 
says it is not true that as a rule the 
second year is the year of greatest egg 
production, and thinks Mr. Robinson 
must have got the idea from some news¬ 
paper statement. Mr. Barron had a 
perfect right to enter hens; there was 
no handicap against hens; and there 
was just as much or more honor 
in winning with hens; why then 
should it be insinuated that he had 
wrongly entered the birds? There are 15 
pens of hens in the present contest at 
Storrs, and in not one single instance 
have the hens laid as many eggs as 
the pullets, even where the same breeder 
enters both hens and pullets. Last year 
C. S. Scoville’s R. C. R. I. Red hens, 
did outlay any pen of pullets of the same 
breed, but this year his pullets are ahead 
of his hens. 
The point N. W. M. makes regarding 
Mr. Barron’s birds laying tinted eggs, 
is worth considering for those who are 
furnishing strictly fancy chalk white 
eggs, and getting an extra price. The 
question of interest is, what proportion 
of the eggs are tinted. I have written 
to several persons who are breeding the 
Barron stock, also to Storrs, for the 
facts in the case. 
GEO. A. COSGROVE. 
WHY THE OX YOKE ? 
After reading the article in The R. 
N.-Y'. regarding oxen, working, breaking, 
etc., I thought I would write a few 
things along that line. In the first place, 
I find that the East is very slow, using 
the same old yoke that has been in use 
for thousands of years, this same yoke , 
being of itself a load. How would you 
like to hoe all day carrying a weight on 
your shoulders? Here in Nebraska about 
25 years ago I saw a farmer working a 
team of large bulls with collars and 
hames upside down, rings in their nose 
and lines. I saw him husking corn, also 
drive them on the road, and when ho 
moved westward, prairie-schooner style, 
he was driving them and leading a nice 
team of gray mares behind the wagon. 
The latest I saw, however, was two years 
ago in the Sand Hill region of Nebraska. 
This man was driving a team of blocky 
steers, past two years old, fully har¬ 
nessed, collars and hames on right end 
up; breeching and bridles, lines, every¬ 
thing complete. He was freighting lum¬ 
ber and mill stuff 28 miles for a distant 
merchant. Why the heavy yoke, with 
its rigid fastenings? F. H. B. 
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