1910. 
1LJCJ3 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
THE POULTRY SYSTEMS. 
I have been informed that the inven¬ 
tor of the Philo system has sold one 
hundred thousand copies of his book de¬ 
scribing that system. Of course others 
have “caught on” and we have the 
“Corning Egg Book.” and the “Keller- 
strass System,” and others; and all of 
them have some good points. The prin¬ 
cipal points in the Philo system are the 
doing away with artificial heat in rais¬ 
ing young chicks, and keeping fowls in 
small numbers confined all the time in 
small houses. At first poultrymen were 
shocked at the idea of trying to raise 
little chicks in cold weather without arti¬ 
ficial heat, but a few venturesome ones 
who tried it, found that it worked all 
right, and now thousands of chicks are 
being raised without other heat than that 
produced by their own bodies. I had 
done that 50 years before, when incuba¬ 
tors had not been invented and hens 
that went broody early in the season 
were too precious to waste their time 
taking care of chicks. As soon as they 
hatched one lot of chicks we used to take 
the chicks away and put another sitting 
of eggs under the hen, and if she was 
in fairly good condition when the second 
lot was hatched, we put a third lot of 
eggs under her. Some folks might think 
this was rather hard on the hen, but 
they must remember that we couldn’t 
make the hen sit; she didn’t have to if 
she didn't want to. But that left us with 
chicks to be reared “by hand,” as they 
used to say. I have made artificial moth¬ 
ers by tacking woolen rags as thickly as 
possible in the top of a box, letting the 
rags hang down for the chicks to nestle 
among, and I have known of a sheepskin 
being used, but 1 think that was not a 
success, as some of the chicks got caught 
by their heads in the wool. But we dem¬ 
onstrated that the principle of it was all 
right; the chicks could be raised in cold 
weather by keeping 20 or 30 together, so 
the heat of their bodies if confined, 
would be sufficient to keep them warm. 
This is the main point of the Philo 
system, only he does it in a different 
manner; he puts the chicks in a small 
box in a nest of hay, letting a sagging 
sheet of muslin rest on the chicks with 
a cotton-stuffed blanket on the sheet. 
On an extra cold night another blanket 
is put on, same as we would do on our 
own beds. A hole in the side of the 
box allows the chicks to run in and out. 
It is some trouble for the first week to 
teach the chicks to go into the box, and 
I find that a hot-water bag, laid on top 
of the blanket, is a help to teach them 
to go into the box, as it offers the in¬ 
ducement which they seem to need. 
A neighbor made some fireless brooder 
coops last Winter, and early in March 
bought some day-old chicks, carried them 
four miles in a carriage and put them in 
the heatless brooders. I saw the chicks 
frequently, and never saw chicks grow 
faster. Owing to sickness he was obliged 
to sell them when half grown, and those 
38 pullets are laying now 19 to 20 eggs 
every day, and a slicker, thriftier, hand¬ 
somer lot of Buff Wyandotte pullets I 
never saw. From the time they were 
taken out of the incubator no artificial 
heat was used in raising them. Quite a 
number of concerns are making “fireless 
brooders” now, and they are being ex¬ 
tensively advertised, and in my opinion 
more and better chickens can be raised 
by this “system” than by the old lamp- 
heated brooders. I find, too, that some 
of the most extensive poultrymen are 
using the “confined” system; recently I 
saw some thousand or more half-grown 
chicks that had never been out of the 
6x8 foot compartments in which they 
were hatched. The owner is one of the 
largest poultry keepers in the State, usu¬ 
ally keepin^ three thousand laying hens 
on his plant. Owing to ill health the 
owner had been unable to give his per¬ 
sonal attention lately, and the compart¬ 
ments certainly left much to be desired 
on the score of cleanliness. Dealers in 
poultry supplies furnish ready-made 
poultry houses and the fowls to put in 
them. These houses are complete, with 
all necessary fixtures, and no outside run 
for the fowls is needed. As no chicks 
are to be raised, there is no need of 
roosters, so no annoyance to neighbors 
from crowing or hens getting out in gar¬ 
dens. The intention is to supply suburb¬ 
anites with a small and neat-looking 
poultry plant that will accommodate a 
dozen or two fowls and furnish the fam¬ 
ily supply of eggs that are known to be 
“fresh.” As the waste food from an 
ordinary family will supply nearly all 
the fowls require, it certainly looks like 
an advisable investment. Changes arc 
being made in the poultry business con¬ 
stantly; able men, like Prof. Retger of 
Yale College, who for five years has been 
studying the cause and prevention of 
“white diarrhoea’’ in chicks, are giving 
their best efforts toward the solving of 
some of the problems connected with 
poultry keeping, and the importance of 
it as an agricultural industry is being 
better appreciated as knowledge of the 
subject increases. If this last census 
takes in all the “backyard” poultry of 
villages and city suburbs, I would not 
be at all suprised to find the value of the 
poultry products of the nation far in 
excess of that of any other agricultural 
■product except corn. In a subsequent 
article I expect to have something to 
say of the other poultry “systems.” 
Connecticut. geo. a. coscrove. 
DITCHING AND DRAINAGE NOTES. 
Do I Need a Ditching Machine? 
F. //., lilue Ash, O .—I have been read¬ 
ing the articles on drainage in The It. 
N.-Y. and was wondering if it would pay 
me to buy a machine. I have about 10 
acres that need draining badly and about 
20 acres that would not be hurt any by 
being drained. I am located about 10 miles 
northeast from Cincinnati, have a hard 
clay sub-soil, and would not be bothered 
much with stone to a depth of three feet. 
Did you ever have any experience with 
cement tile, and if so how do they com¬ 
pare with clay tile? 
Ans. —With that amount of land to 
drain we think a ditching machine of 
some sort would pay. In these days of 
high-priced hand labor, ditching with¬ 
out machine power on large operations 
is too expensive. You could probably 
get outside work for your machine. We 
have a number of reports on cement 
drain tile. It takes a long time to test 
such a thing as a system of drains, but 
the reports thus far received are favor¬ 
able, provided the tiles are well made, 
with the ends square, so the tiles can 
be put closely together without making 
open joints. 
A Machine For Sticky Soil. 
G. TT. C. (\o Address ).—You articles 
on tile-ditching and especially the two on 
tile-ditching machines are of great inter¬ 
est to me, and I hope you will hav; more 
of them. I have about 100 acres of hard 
black clay, flat, with a slight slope to¬ 
ward a natural drainage channel that runs 
along one side. It makes an ideal drain¬ 
age proposition, but I have felt very skep¬ 
tical about being able to ditch ’ it by 
machine, as the stuff sticks to spades aud 
diggers, aud would stick to the plow or 
buckets of the machine, ball up and pre¬ 
vent it from working it seems to me. I 
have never seen an account of any ma¬ 
chine that were worked in this kind of 
ground ; all the accounts that 1 have read 
relate to either gravelly ground or light 
clay. It would be too expensive to ditch 
this by hand, but if I could do it by 
machine it would be a great thing as an 
object lesson for the country, besides mul¬ 
tiplying the value of the laud several tines 
at least. The stuff is so hard and in¬ 
tractable unless kept under constant cul¬ 
tivation, which is not practicable unless 
there is rain, that nobody but a darkey 
cares to work it, and the natives sav the 
stuff is not worth working To show you 
how the stuff works, I drove a 1 %-iticli 
pipe two feet into the ground. On pulling 
the pipe out I found one to two inches 
of top soil in the bottom ot it. This 
had acted as a plug and kept the rest out. 
A trough-shaped digger like that f l own in 
your picture would a< t the same way. 
Axs.—It is possible that a machine 
known as the True ditcher would work 
in this swamp. We had pictures of it 
several years ago—at work in the salt 
marshes in New Jersey. It was used in 
draining these marshes' to kill the 
mosquitoes. It works on the principle 
of a large cutting box of steel which is 
driven by steam power down into the 
soil. It is then lifted up and carries 
with it a big chunk or cake of; the sticky 
soil. This is forked out at one side, 
the machine moved a little ahead, and 
the cutter driven down again. This is 
repeated rapidly—the machine being run 
on planks to prevent it sinking in the 
mud. Tn sticky soil free from stones 
or logs this machine works, but it would 
be useless in ordinary soil. 
Keeping Skunks. 
May one legally raise skunks in New 
York State? Said skunks will be caught 
during the open season. I have been told 
there is a heavy fine for keeping skunks. 
r. w. K. 
A man will no doubt fine himself if be 
starts a skunk farm—that is, he will fail 
and lose money on the operation. Tin* 
business is not a success. It lias been tried 
many times, and great stories are told 
about its success during the early months 
of operation. Later a painful silence us¬ 
ually falls over the scene. There is no 
general law against keeping skunks. If a 
man tried it near a village the local board 
of health would probably shut him off if 
the skunk farm came to be a nuisance— 
and it usually does. The Department of 
Agriculture has issued some bulletins on 
the breeding of wild animals for their fur. 
What About Brain Food? 
This Question Came Up in the Recent 
Trial for Libel. 
A “Weekly” printed some criticisms of the 
claims made for our foods. It evidently did 
not fancy our reply printed in various news¬ 
papers, and brought suit for libel. At the trial 
some interesting facts came out. 
Some of the chemical and medical experts dif¬ 
fered widely. 
The following facts, however, were quite clearly 
established: 
Analysis of brain by an unquestionable au¬ 
thority, Geoghegan, shows of Mineral Salts, 
Phosphoric Acid and Potash combined (Phos¬ 
phate of Potash), 2.91 per cent of the total, 5.33 
of all Mineral Salts. 
This is over one-half. 
Beaunis, another authority shows “Phosphoric 
Acid combined” and Potash 73.44 per cent from 
a total of 101.07. 
Considerable more than one-half of Phosphate 
of Potash. 
Analysis of Grape-Nuts shows: Potassium and 
Phosphorus (which join and make Phosphate of 
Potash), is considerable more than one-half of 
all the mineral salts in the food. 
Dr. Geo. W. Carey, an authority on the con¬ 
stituent elements of the body, says: “The gray 
matter of the brain is controlled "entirely by the 
inorganic cell-salt, Potassium Phosphate (Phos¬ 
phate of Potash). This salt unites with albumen 
and by the addition of oxygen creates nerve fluid 
or the gray matter of the brain. Of course, 
there is a trace of other salts and other organic 
matter in nerve fluid, but Potassium Phosphate is 
the chief factor, and has the power within itself 
to attract, by its own law of affinity, all things 
needed to manufacture the elixir of life.” 
Further on he says: “The beginning and end 
of the matter is to supply the lacking principle, 
and in molecular form, exactly as nature furnishes 
it in vegetables, fruit and grain. To supply de¬ 
ficiencies—this is the only law of cure.” 
The natural conclusion is that if Phosphate of 
Potash is the needed mineral element in brain 
and you use food which does not contain it, you 
have brain fag because its daily loss is not sup¬ 
plied. 
On the contrary, if you eat food known to 
be rich in this element, you place before the 
life forces that which nature demands for brain¬ 
building. 
Tn the trial a sneer was uttered because Mr. 
Post announced that he had made years of re¬ 
search in this country and some clinics of Europe, 
regarding the effect of the mind on digestion of 
food. 
But we must be patient witli those who sneer 
at facts they know nothing about. 
Mind does not work well on a brain that is 
broken down by lack of nourishment. 
A peaceful and evenly poised mind is neces¬ 
sary to good digestion. 
Worry, anxiety, fear, bate, &c., &c., directly 
interfere with or step the flow of Ptyalin, the 
digestive juice of the mouth, and also interfere 
with the flow of the digestive juices of stomach 
and pancreas. 
Therefore, the mental state of the individual 
has much to do (more than suspected) with 
digestion. 
This trial has demonstrated: 
That Brain is made of Phosphate of Potash as 
the principal Mineral Salt, added to albumen and 
water. 
That Grape-Nuts contains that element as more 
than one-half of all its mineral salts. 
A healthy brain is important, if one would 
“do things” in this world. 
A man who sneers at “Mind” sneers at the 
best and least understood part of himself. That 
part which some folks believe links us to the 
Infinite. 
Mind asks for a healthy brain upon which 
to act, and Nature has defined a way to make 
a healthy brain and renew it day by day as it 
is used up from work of the previous day. 
Nature’s way to rebuild is by the use of food 
which supplies the things required. 
“There’s a Reason’’ 
Postum Cereal Co., Ltd., 
Battle Creek, Mich 
