658 
THIS R U IS /V L, NEW-YORKER 
Use small cow bells that will make some noise and 
not little toy sheep bells. 
DISEASES AND PARASITES.—Another trouble 
to face is internal parasites, stomach worms and 
nodular disease that appear when sheep are pas¬ 
tured. Years ago these troubles were called paper- 
skin because of the bloodless looking skin of the 
affected sheep. Happily prevention is easy and 
cures are possible. Prevention is the proper thing. 
Keep tobacco where the flock can always get it. 
Tobacco stems are cheap, and when chopped up 
with fodder or silage cutter lambs will eat it as 
soon as they will eat anything, and so far as I 
know lambs that have always eaten tobacco are 
never troubled with internal parasites. These 
troubles just enumerated, and some minor ones 
that we can take up later, are more than offset by 
the advantages to the everyday farmer of keeping 
sheep, perhaps in a moderate way. Their care and 
feed bill need not be so great, and the income is 
always welcome. r. a. iiayne. 
Jefferson Co., Ohio. 
WESTERN ALFALFA CULTURE. 
Some of the experiment stations are issuing ex¬ 
cellent bulletins on Alfalfa culture. In the West 
this crop is the leading one. It is coming so that 
most of the other crops are based upon Alfalfa. 
The Kansas Station at Manhattan, in Bulletin 
197, gives a good summary of Alfalfa conditions in 
that State. It seems that in Western Kansas Al¬ 
falfa may be planted in drills or rows, and culti¬ 
vated like corn or sorghum. In the drier sections 
of the State this row cultivation is a success, and 
such Alfalfa usually produces more seed than when 
it is broadcast. It appears that the Alfalfa should 
be cut for seed when about half of the seed pods 
are brown. Many farmers cut their seed too soon, 
which results in a crop not as strong or vital as it 
should be. While Alfalfa has a very deep tap root, 
and is supposed to pump up water from the lower 
soil level, it leaves the ground very dry after a 
full crop. In Kansas, when the Alfalfa is to be 
followed by another crop, Kaffir corn or sorghum is 
recommended. The Kaffir is known as a drought- 
resisting crop, and will do better on the dry soil 
than corn or most other crops. These things are 
of great importance on the dry plains, and espe¬ 
cially in a season of drought. 
The Kansas Station says that when the Alfalfa 
is grown for hay, and the hay is sold, compara¬ 
tively little plant food is added to the soil, while 
large quantities are taken away. The advice in 
Kansas is to feed the Alfalfa on the farm, and 
thus get it back on the land. The point, however, 
is that continued exports of Alfalfa away from the 
farm will run the soil down in spite of the fact 
that we have all been taught that Alfalfa is a soil 
renewer. In the Eastern States it is often very 
much more businesslike to raise Alfalfa and sell the 
hay, since it brings a large price in the market. 
Where this is done the point is to use large quan¬ 
tities of phosphoric acid and potash, and fair quan¬ 
tities of nitrogen in the form of chemicals, to keep 
up the supply. Where this is done selling Alfalfa 
may prove a good business in every way. In the 
Western Alfalfa fields it has been found desirable 
to scratch or work over the surface of the ground 
in Spring. This bulletin contains pictures of two 
machines, or tools used for this purpose. They are 
shown at Figs. 272 and 272. As will be seen, one 
looks like a hayrake. but with much heavier spring 
teeth than those found on the rake. The other 
tool is an ordinary spring-tooth harrow, with small 
sharp tooth attachments, which scratch and tear 
the ground without digging it too much. The latter 
type was recommended by our old friend John M. 
Jamison of Ohio, who often wrote us about it. 
NOTES ON GRASS AND ALFALFA SEEDING. 
in one bout with the hoes (double disk) of the 
drill. This with a previous experience, showed me 
that the drill will not do satisfactory work with 
such small seeds, without press wheels or some 
other means of regulating depth, for the Alfalfa 
drilled in came up unevenly, and was entirely miss¬ 
ing in those spots where the soil was extra mellow. 
On the strip sown to grass, I piit one half bushel of 
Timothy and Red-top per acre. As I did not have 
quite enough clear grass seed, I used a little that 
was mixed with Medium clover. 
It rained that same day, and both pieces came 
up very quickly. The Alfalfa did well and the 
grass soon formed a lawn. One end of the piece is 
a limestone soil, and is naturally well drained, while 
the other is more clayey, and more retentive of 
water. Tt turned out to be a hard Winter on seed- 
A Western Tool for Working Alfalfa. Fig. 272. 
ing, and the Alfalfa on the wetter end killed out, 
but on the other end I got three good crops. Last 
year, I had the heaviest piece of hay on part of 
this piece of Alfalfa, that I ever cut. This was on 
the part that had the deeper soil. The dry weather 
cut down the yield on the shallow soil some, and 
made the second and third crops short. 
The one-lialf acre of grass, which was put in ac¬ 
cording to the Clark method, except that the cultiva¬ 
tion was applied to a valuable crop of potatoes, in¬ 
stead of to a bare field, yielded nearly two loads. 
As I had no scales, I cannot state the yield in tons, 
but we estimated the loads to weigh nearly 3.000 
pounds. The rack was eight by 11 feet, and the 
standard about six feet above the rack. The loads 
were laid out over the sides of the rack a foot on 
each side and were perhaps a foot above the stand¬ 
ard. The hay was short and fine, but very thick. 
I think a fair estimate of the yield would be five 
tons of field-cured hay per acre. 
Next to this half acre, after removing the pota¬ 
toes, and fitting as before, I sowed wheat and four 
quarts of Timothy per acre. This was sown about 
September 20. The wheat made a pretty good 
growth, but Winter-killed. I cut the piece for hay 
the following season. There was so little wheat left 
alive that it did not materially influence the yield. 
This piece of three acres yielded over nine loads, 
such as were described above. The hay was much 
taller and coarser than the other and was heavier. 
We thought that four tons per acre was a fair esti¬ 
mate for this piece. It will be seen that although 
sown a month later, on land which was. if anything. 
In the Summer of 1911 I had 19 acres of potatoes. 
Of these, about 10 were early ones. These potatoes 
were kept clean, and after being dug with the digger 
with a little fitting, the land was in excellent con¬ 
dition for any crop which I might wish to plant. 
There had been potatoes on the piece of which I am 
going to speak, the previous year also, and it had 
had an application of one-half ton of high grade 
fertilizer to the acre, each year. After I had re¬ 
moved the first 314 acres of potatoes, I had the piece 
thoroughly fitted with a spring-tooth, without plow¬ 
ing, and about August 20 I sowed it. The first three 
acres were sown to Alfalfa, and the other half acre 
to grass as in the Clark method. The land is what 
is known as Ontario fine sandy loam. This is a 
medium soil, grading between a sandy loam and a 
clay loam. I sowed 25 pounds of Alfalfa to the 
acre, mostly broadcast. As an experiment, I put 
poorer, four quarts of seed yielded nearly as much 
as one-half bushel of mixed Timothy and Red-top. 
The quality of the hay on the thinly seeded piece 
was much the best. 
Early in the Spring, before I knew that the wheat 
was all killed, I seeded the piece with the wheat on 
it, with Red clover, Alsike and more Timothy. In the 
Fall, the whole piece, including the heavily seeded 
half acre, was top-dressed with 10 loads of manure 
per acre, applied with a spreader. The half acre 
was spread first, followed by the rest, the manure 
being applied as made. 
In spite of the advantage which the half acre had. 
by being spread two months earlier than the average 
of the rest of the piece, it failed to yield as well as 
the rest of the piece in 1913. There was a good lot 
of Alsike in the hay where I sowed it the year 
May 2, 
before, but the Red clover and the extra Timothy 
did not show up to any extent. The whole 3% 
acres were harvested at one time, no attempt be¬ 
ing made to keep the two parts separate, so it is 
impossible to state the comparative yields, but the 
half acre had not more than from one-half to two- 
thirds as good a crop as the rest. The total yield 
was a little over 10 loads. The dry weather seemed 
to hit. that which was heavily seeded, much worse 
than the other. It is impossible to say how much 
of the extra yield was due to the Alsike, but I think 
that the thinly-seeded piece womd still have been 
ahead had there been no Alsike. In my opinion 
nothing is gained in sowing more than one peck 
of Timothy to the acre on perfectly fitted soil. 
Strange to say, the Red clover that was sown in with 
the grass on the half-acre piece came on quite well 
in 1913 and thus offset the Alsike on the other piece 
to a certain extent. 
In sowing grass seed with my grain, I have usu¬ 
ally used eight pounds of Red clover (Medium) 
two of Alsike and 10 of Timothy. This year my 
Red clover as well as that of my neighbors, seemed 
to be injured in some way so that there was scarce¬ 
ly any in the hay. The Alsike. however, did very 
well. T think that a few pounds of Alsike is pretty 
cheap insurance, and I shall increase mine to three 
or four pounds to the acre this year. 
Adams Co., N. Y. albert it. de graff. 
AN OLD FERTILIZER FAKE. 
Every now and then some one comes telling about 
the so-called “new mineral fertilizer.” Sometimes 
it is a tale of woe from some person who paid for 
the stuff and found it worthless, or at least of no 
value to his crops. Or it may be some one who has 
for the moment been carried away by the fairy tales 
related about this stuff. They are 011 the point of 
investing their good dollars, but before they start 
they want to know a little more about it. We had 
one case where a company owning an orange grove 
in Cuba actually bought several tons of this mate¬ 
rial. not only receiving little or no plant food, but 
actually paying more than the price, and unable to 
obtain a rebate to which they were clearly entitled. 
It is remarkable that this stuff can be kept be¬ 
fore the market so long after the repeated exposure 
concerning it. They seem to do these things very 
well in Florida; would that they could run the land 
shark and the town lot boomers through the mill 
as they do fertilizer frauds. 
In the last Florida report we are told how the 
commissioner, in order to be sure of his ground, ob¬ 
tained sample after sample of this new mineral 
fertilizer and analyzed it carefully. The first sam¬ 
ple contained in one full ton exactly IS ounces of 
phosphoric acid, of which nothing whatever was 
available, while there was not even a smell of avail¬ 
able potash in the whole ton. In order to be sure, 
he took another sample. This one contained three 
pounds of phosphoric acid in a full ton, but there 
was not even a smell of available potash. Nothing 
like being sure, when you want to do a complete 
job with a fake, so he took a third sample. This 
cue contained the marvellous amount of 14 ounces 
of phosphoric acid, in one full ton. Wonderful to 
relate, this sample actually contained one-third 
ounce of potash in the full ton. 
You might think that would settle the matter, and 
it did. so far as the Florida commissioner was con¬ 
cerned. lie issued a statement to the public con¬ 
demning this new mineral fertilizer as a fake, and 
notified all dealers or agents that if they offered it 
for sale, they would be subject to the penalties 
imposed by the Florida law. That is good business, 
a model which many of our State commissioners 
might keep in mind* Rut did it shut off our friends 
this mineral fertilizer company? If their fertilizer 
contained as much available plant food as they 
could show of guff and nerve, they would have the 
most remarkable fertilizer compound that the 
world has ever seen. 
The average man would do his best to forget min¬ 
eral fertilizer if bis scheme were shown up in this 
way, but these fellows are apparently working poor 
( Id Uncle Sam in their efforts to sell 15 cents worth 
of plant food at about $10. They are going direct 
to customers, hoping in this way to escape or get 
by the Florida law. The United States Government 
ought to take this matter up. aim help the Florida 
authorities to handle this stuff. 
It is hard to understand how intelligent men, 
some of whom have grown crops all their lives, 
could be induced to fall for such a proposition. One 
would think that the very stories told by these peo¬ 
ple would act to kill them off, but apparently there 
are still plenty of people in this country who think 
they can raise potatoes on guff and fairy tales. 
