©94 
WINTER BROILERS AND TRUCK. 
Tart IT. 
FEEDING FOR GROWTH.—The first week or 
two the broiler chicks should receive the same care¬ 
ful treatment as other chicks. A little feed several 
times a day and always in a dry state is safest.. 
After these days of baby ills are safely passed they 
should be pushed along as rapidly as possible. The 
use of a mixed ground mash moistened with skim- 
milk is recommended by many, and probably cannot 
be surpassed. Some growers, however, find a well- 
balanced dry mash so much safer and easier to feed 
that the extra growth is more than made up. A 
good wet masli can be mixed as follows: 100 pounds 
cornmeal, 50 pounds bran, 50 pounds wheat mid¬ 
tilings, 50 pounds ground oats (with hulls sifted out), 
or rolled oats, 50 pounds high-grade beef scrap. A 
good dry mash can be made up of 50 pounds bran, 
50 pounds middlings, 50 pounds rolled oats, 50 
pounds cornmeal, 50 pounds Alfalfa meal. 100 pounds 
beef scrap. One or two feeds a day of cracked corn 
and one or two feeds of the wet mash should be 
sufficient. The dry mash, when used, should be left 
before the chicks all the time. In using wet mashes 
avoid all appearances of sloppiness. They should be 
moistened to a crumbly consistency and only enough 
fed so that it will be cleaned up in a few minutes. 
If milk is convenient to give them for drinking let 
it sour each day before giving it to them. 
PICKING AND MARKETING.—Broilers, like 
market poultry, should be bled and killed through 
the roof of the mouth and dry-picked. The picking 
part is the most difficult perhaps. The skin is so 
tender that the beginner gets discouraged. The nov¬ 
ice should have patience and pick the first few 
chickens very carefully, one or two feathers at a 
time. After trying awhile, or if by chance he can 
watch an expert, rapidity will come. An experienced 
picker will do from 75 to 100 a day. Women and 
children can do this work as well as or better than 
a man. The birds should not show many bad tears 
when packed. An occasional large tear can l»e neatly 
sewed up. After picking the birds should be placed 
in cool water and half an hour later into ice water. 
Sometimes if warm chickens are put directly into 
ice water the animal heat inside forms gases and the 
carcasses show green and are unsalable. They should 
be packed in barrels and plenty of ice used at all 
seasons. Even in Winter they will be held over in 
warm rooms at one end of the line or the other, and 
plenty of ice is the only insurance of good keeping. 
Of course the freight service should never be trusted 
with anything of this sort, and the fast express is 
slow enough. While in most cities there is abso¬ 
lutely no demand for Winter broilers at these high 
prices, large cities like New York. Philadelphia. Bos¬ 
ton and half a dozen others in the East are usually 
demanding more than they can get. 
There are very few profitable special broiler farms, 
while on the other hand everything is in favor of the 
farmer. Eggs are needed for broiler hatching at the 
season of the year when liens are molting and pullets 
just beginning to lay. Eggs are scarce and high. 
A flock of a hundred Murch-lialehed pullets, or even 
February-hatched, should insure a good supply. Do 
not attempt to buy eggs for hatching; raise them 
yourself and see that they are abundant when you 
want them. It is essentially a farmer's undertaking, 
and for the farmer or farmer's son, wife or daughter 
who wants to build up a trade, it is only a >question 
of getting interested in it and working it out from a 
small beginning. Other Eastern farmers may well 
learn a lesson from the farmers of Gloucester Coun¬ 
ty, N. J. There, in one of the most prosperous agri¬ 
cultural sections in the country, where their aspar¬ 
agus, tomatoes sweet potatoes and other vegetables 
are noted in all markets for their superiority, the 
farmers practice Winter broiler raising. There it 
has become an art and instead of sorting over stored 
vegetables, buying grain to feed unprofitable stock, 
or swapping stories at the village stores, the men 
raise chickens through the Winter. Hundreds of 
thousands of these Winter-raised chickens are mar¬ 
keted each year from this section. They are sold at 
two pounds in weight and average the grower 75 
cents apiece at 12 to 14 weeks old. Many times they 
bring a clear dollar each, and get to market size at 
10 weeks; but even at the first-named figures, con¬ 
sidering mortality and all, they cannot fail to bring 
a profit of from 25 to 50 cents each. This line is 
just beginning to open up. The demand of the cities 
is growing for high-class poultry products. The 
East furnishes a very small percentage of the 
amount used in New York City alone. Here we are 
within a few hours of a city which uses a hundred 
carloads of live poultry every week that are shipped 
a thousand miles or more. Who says there is no 
money in chickens? There never will be any money 
for the inexperienced. The poultry man of any wide 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
experience has found that chicken raising is a de¬ 
pendent industry. It is an industry that finds its 
proper place only in a well-managed system of di¬ 
versified farming. a. l. clark. 
RIGHT TO DEFEND PROPERTY. 
Will you give your readers information as to their 
rights to protect, to the fullest extent, their property 
against burglars? You give the case of one unfor¬ 
tunate chicken man in Massachusetts, but hardly .state 
as a fact that the same law holds good in New York 
State, and 1 know several who ask the question. Does 
the law say to the lawbreaker: “Steal all the chickens, 
etc., you please, the owner does not dare use force 
or powder persuasion for the protection of his own.” 
C. D. IS. 
An owner of property in New York State can use 
all the force necessary to defend himself, one of his 
household or in preventing or attempting to prevent 
an offense against himself or a trespass or other 
unlawful interference with his real or personal prop¬ 
erty, but the force or violence used by him is limited 
by this necessity and should not be more than suffi¬ 
cient to prevent such offense. The point is, he can¬ 
not go beyond this and mete out to the offender the 
punishment he probably deserves. All the property 
owner can do is to protect himself or his property 
or apprehend a criminal. 
The difficulty in the case of the Massachusetts 
man was that he went too far. The thief had left 
the premises or was endeavoring to leave when, 
without proper regard for the consequences, the 
owner shot in his direction. In New York State as 
in Massachusetts if a man shoots into the dark or 
takes any other extreme measures without due re¬ 
gard for the safety of persons who might suffer by 
the act, he shows a negligent disregard of the rights 
of others and must suffer the consequences. An 
owner may arrest a thief who enters his property 
and may use all the force necessary in so doing, 
and he may use all the force that is required even 
to shooting the wrongdoer if it is necessary in de¬ 
fending himself, but in cold blood, or while the thief 
is escaping, he cannot he shot down. The owner 
is not then defending himself or his property. Prob¬ 
ably the proper procedure in a case of this char¬ 
acter would he for the owner to arrest the thieves 
if possible; if this could fiot be done, to order them 
off the premises, using any force that is necessary 
to accomplish this object. As said before, an owner 
may use all the force necessary iu putting off or 
keeping off a trespasser, and a stealer of chickens is 
both a trespasser and a thief. But the punishment 
of the crime committed must be left to the law. 
It is taken for granted—in some quarters—that 
the proper way to deal with a chicken thief is to use 
a shotgun loaded with coarse salt and fine pepper 
and to shoot low. Although this is going beyond the 
safety line, still it has many things in its favor and 
there is not much probability that a prosecution 
would ever be attempted on the part of the thief. 
M. D. 
THE FARM LABOR PROBLEM. 
As a “former hired man,” who never received 
more than $15 a month, and who worked from 11 
to 16 hours a day, the writer of these lines lias 
nothing but praise for anyone who tries to improve 
the condition of the farm laborer, and yet he must 
dissent from some of the conclusions reached by 
R. G. K. in his recent articles iu The It. N.-Y. It 
is true that the wages paid by fanners are much 
lower than those i>ai<l by manufacturers, but is the 
farmer to blame for it? Let us suppose that $25 or 
$30 a month is the maximum that the average farmer 
pays. This may not be a princely sum; but can the 
farmer afford to pay more and retain liis farm? A 
manufacturer may pay his employees $3 or $4 a 
day, and still earn considerable profit, but should a 
farmer pay his help the same wages, his occupation 
will be gone in a very short time. R. G. K. tells 
us that “no matter how much the man may iucrease 
in efficiency, he still receives about the .same remun¬ 
eration for his toil.” This certainly is a sad condi¬ 
tion, but what about the farmer himself? How 
much does he receive for his toil? The fact that 
during the Summer rush the farmer is sometimes 
obliged to pay an inexperienced student $25 has 
nothing to do with the case. Considering the stand¬ 
ard of farm wages, the probability is that the stu¬ 
dent received every month $30 or $15 more than he 
was worth. 
R. G. K.'s remedy is to give the hired man a cer¬ 
tain portion of the profits on the peach or the apple 
crop, which would make him interested in the job. 
This sounds very rational, and I think that in some 
eases it would he a good working proposition, but 
I fear that the average hired man would take alto¬ 
gether too much interest in that particular crop, 
and neglect much of his other work. R. G. K. says: 
“How wouL. it affect the hired man if the owner 
of the farm should come out of the barn and say, 
September (3, 
Bill, last year we made $1,500 on the farm, and this 
year you are going to get five per cent of the net 
earnings on this place. If we make $1,500 this year, 
you are going to get a check for $75 as your share 
of the profit in the business.’ ” This again sounds 
very well; but let us suppose that the farmer come* 
out of the barn and says: “Bill, if we make $1,500 
this year, you will get a check for $75. If we lose 
$500 your wages will be reduced by $5 a month.” 
Would the hired man accept this proposition? Would 
lie not demand full wages or leave the farm? Let 
us by all means give the hired man the best oppor¬ 
tunities we cau afford, hut let us not deceive our¬ 
selves. The average hired man will always consider 
his own interests, and not those of his employer. 
Sullivan Co., N. Y. c. p. uebylson. 
WHAT AILED THE VETCH ? 
What was the matter with this vetch? Two fields 
{seven and eight acres) were sown with rye 35 pounds 
and vetch 60 pounds per acre, September, 1012, fol¬ 
lowing oats; one ton raw ground lime per acre. Both 
fields in good state of fertility; one had a fine stand 
of clover recently, and on the other the oats grew so 
rank as to lodge badly. The vetch all came through 
the Winter alive except spots where water stood for 
some days at a time. In early Summer it began to 
look sickly, and Inspection showed that the stems were 
brown and dead looking for two or three inches above 
the surface of the ground. By harvest time the a - etch 
had entirely disappeared except one-quarter of an acre. 
There were plenty of large nodules on the vetch roots 
in the Spring. G. A. 
Monroe Co„ N. Y. 
Without a personal inspection of the crop, the 
exact cause of trouble cannot he stated. My obser¬ 
vation of similar conditions would lead me to offer 
the following suggestions: In the first place my 
suggestion is that the rate of seeding of rye and 
vetch might have been wrong. Under tbe soil con¬ 
ditions mentioned, I would suggest a seeding of at 
least 30 pounds of rye per acre, and not more than 
30 pounds of vetch seed. In fact my impression is 
that even less vetch seed would have been preferable. 
We have often noticed that where there is a very 
thick and heavy growth of vetch aud a very light 
stand of rye, there is a tendency for the vetch to 
lodge. Under these circumstances, particularly in a 
rich soil, the surface of the soil is likely to remain 
damp long after rains. These conditions are very 
favorable for the development of fungus diseases, 
causing decay and drying up of the vetch plants. 
The same condition, i. e., lodged vetch, is usually 
accompanied by the attack of plant lice aud perhaps 
other insects that cause the vetch plants to die, dry 
up and disappear. The loss of the vetch crop, men¬ 
tioned by G. A., may have been due to these causes. 
If anyone finds a similar condition of the vetch crop 
I would suggest sending samples of plants to the 
State Experiment Station for inspection. The stems 
and undersides of the leaves should be carefully 
examined for aphis or other insect enemies. 
This inquiry emphasizes an important point in 
vetch culture, viz., that the vetch should be sown iu 
such combination with the nurse crop, as will enable 
the nurse crop to hold the vetch plants up off the 
ground. This is particularly true where the vetch is 
grown for seed production. The exact ratio of vetch 
to rye or other seed can only be determined by 
exj»erieuee. It will defend on soil and seed condi¬ 
tions. Other things being equal, I believe that on 
rich, fertile soil less vetch seed should be used iu 
proportion to the rye seed than on lighter, less fer¬ 
tile soil. The lest vetch seed crop I have ever seen 
was grown in very light sandy soil, lacking in humus 
and fertility. 
The success of vetch on light soils is one of its 
chief values. The reclamation of these poorer soils 
is one of the most important uses of vetch. Under 
such conditions a rather heavy seeding of vetch 
is recommended. The sowing of vetch for a cover 
crop should l>e done at a different rate than when 
sown for a seed crop. I should say in general that 
when sowed for cover crop purposes, double the 
amount of vetch seed should be used than when 
sown for seed production. 
I have noticed this Summer in the Connecticut 
Valley, under dry weather conditions, com aud to¬ 
bacco grown upon vetch land, have withstood the 
drought much better than under any other condi¬ 
tions. This fact is so marked that there Is no ques¬ 
tion of the value of plowing under vetch crops for 
improving soil conditions for these crops during 
this season. a. d. shamei.. 
The advantage of drying out hen manure with plas¬ 
ter, dust or coal ashes is to enable us to crush the 
chunks fine and make even spreading. Drying also 
stops fermentation. 
It needs to be told over and over that hen manure is 
the richest of farm fertilizers because the liquids and 
solids are voided together. This manure is rich in nitro¬ 
gen. To make it most useful for general farm or gar¬ 
den crops mix with each 100 pounds 15 pounds acid 
phosphate and 10 of muriate of potash. Always keep 
it dry and never mix with lime. 
