830 
THE RURAL 
NEW-VOR KER 
June ‘JO, 
Hope Farm Notes 
HIS FEATHERS RUFFLED. 
M R. John II. Robinson, editor of Farm 
Poultry, devotes a page of his paper 
to prove that “ It is up io the Hope Farm 
Man.” This is all about my opinion re¬ 
garding “standard” White Wyandotte 
poultry. Mr. Robinson devotes some 
1.000 words to showing that the Hope 
Farm man is anything but an authority 
on poultry. Everyone knew that before. 
Then our friend gets down to these propo¬ 
sitions : 
For a year’s laying on my place I will 
match a pen of 10 White Wyandottes 
of an exhibition stock, with such length 
of leg and feather as are shown in the 
Standard ideal, against any 10 “bred to 
lay” non-Standard Wyandottes that the 
Hope Farm may select for a year's laying 
at Hope Farm. 
For a year’s laying on my place I will 
match a pen of four extremely low set, 
loose feathered exhibition White Wyan¬ 
dottes against an equal number of non- 
Standard Wyandottes, kept as one flock 
on Hope Farm. 
For a year’s laying on my place I will 
match a pen of 10 Standard White 
Wyandottes—no two from the same 
breeder—against 20 scrubs of the kind 
the Hope Farm man sent to the laying 
competition at Storrs Experiment Sta¬ 
tion to be selected as these were and kept 
as one flock for a year ou Hope Farm. 
Now I never had the pleasure of meet¬ 
ing Mr. Robinson, who is regarded as a 
high authority on poultry. A good friend 
who seems to be posted writes me this: 
“Brother John is mighty shrewd, and 
he can certainly twist the other fellow’s 
statements and meaning in an astonish¬ 
ing way.” Now right at the beginning 
I will say that I am neither a word- 
twister nor a poultry expert. I have a 
few opinions which I am prepared to 
back. We printed on page 725 the pic¬ 
ture of what is supposed to be an ideal 
Wyandotte hen. I called it a plump 
dumpling of a bird, and I do not believe 
hens shaped like that one can make a 
good laying record. Now if Brother 
Robinson will come forward with birds 
of that shape, I will meet him with 
utility birds. The plan of conducting 
such a contest with one flock on my 
farm and the other on his farm is non¬ 
sense. Such an arrangement would queer 
it from the start. Most people would re¬ 
gard such a “contest” as a bluffing match 
between hired men, no matter how care¬ 
fully it was conducted. It would be a 
match not between types of hens as much 
as between types of hen-feeders. As a 
hen-feeder and a word-twister, the Hope 
Farm man would be beaten long before 
he went into the ring. The place for such 
a trial is at one of the egg-laying con¬ 
tests. I have the utmost confidence in 
the managers of these contests. Brother 
Robinson can arrange to have his birds 
cared for and fed as he specifies. I am 
willing to leave it to the contest mana¬ 
gers. So all Brother Robinson now has 
to do is to say which public contest he 
prefers and come right up to the rack 
with his birds. Under no circumstances 
whatever will I go into any contest with 
the pens separated and not under official 
supervision. I agree to collect the birds, 
pay the entrance fee and then let them 
alone without a murmur or a kick, no 
matter what they do. My plan will be 
to call for volunteers who have good 
utility Wyandottes which they are will¬ 
ing to match against the “standard” 
type. Then we will select the birds with 
the best breeding and shape for egg pro¬ 
duction. I hope Brother Robinson will 
do much the same and select birds which 
score as close to “perfection” as possible. 
Then we shall have the long-delayed 
square-toed contest between plumage and 
performance or standard vs. utility. 
Come Brother Robinson, walk up to the 
rack with your birds. 
Long And Short Backs. —The Wyan¬ 
dotte breeders understand well enough 
that I have nothing against their breed. 
I have kept Wyandottes in a small way, 
and like them. I am merely trying to 
help settle this old question about “stand¬ 
ard” and utility. Both sides have been 
going around for some years with chips 
on their shoulders, but when it comes 
to knocking them off it seems to me like 
“after you Alphonse.” So the Hope 
Farm man comes forward and knocks off 
both chips—first by entering his “scrubs” 
at the poultry contest. This operated 
just as I felt it would. First both sides 
laughed till they cried. Then the scrubs 
began to lay a few rings around the 
weekly records of the pure bloods. Laugh¬ 
ter. they say. is close to tears. It is also 
close to a scrap. Thump the Hope 
Farm man all you please, gentlemen. You 
can’t hurt his feelings by calling him 
ignorant, stupid—a drone or a fraud. 
He might possibly be all four. If, how- 
evver, he can line up the “standard” and 
utility men for a square and straight 
contest between short back and long 
back he will be well satisfied. When this 
question of Tom Barron’s Wyandottes 
came up I wrote all the Americans who 
have entered Wyandottes in the egg-lay¬ 
ing contests, asking how high their birds 
would score. Here is a sample of the re¬ 
plies : 
I took a trip over to Thorndale to look- 
over my Wyandottes there, and I do not 
think my birds would score over 85. I 
have had 14 years’ breeding experience 
with Wyandottes, and would say that the 
Standard makers have almost killed the 
breed by insisting on too short a body 
for utility purposes. I am a machinist 
by trade, and came out in the country to 
die of consumption 15 years ago. I was 
broken in health and pocketbook, and 
started to raise Wyandotte chickens. It 
was not long before they began to shorten 
the backs of the Wyandottes and I fell 
short on Winter eggs. I tried to stay 
with them for a couple of years, but I 
found if I wanted eggs in Winter in 
paying quantity I had to breed longer 
backs. I have done so and my birds are 
giving me a nice living from utility stock 
entirely. c.eorge w. Middleton. 
Pennsylvania. 
This backs up what Tom Barron said 
about the working people of England de¬ 
manding a bird that will lay eggs. There 
is a whole lot at stake in such a con¬ 
test as Mr. Robinson proposes, and I 
think the utility men will welcome it. 
I want to hear from all who are inter¬ 
ested in regard to selecting utility birds 
with known “egg pedigrees.” Of course 
I assume that Mr. Robinson will agree 
to enter one of the egg-laying contests 
with this important matter at stake. 
How deep do you plow to cover up such 
tall rye in order to get a good seed bed. 
and at the same time not have it tang¬ 
ling in the cultivator and other ma¬ 
chinery. j. w. B. 
On the average our plows run six to 
seveu inches deep. The heavy chain in 
front turns the rye under and packs it 
down. Both Cutaway and Acme run 
with a shallow cut and we rarely culti¬ 
vate over three inches deep. I think this 
rather shallow plowing for corn where 
the soil is well packed better on the 
whole than deeper working. Surely shal¬ 
low cultivation in an ordinary season is 
better than deep working. Our plan is 
to plow under the rye and clover and 
operate so as to decay and use up this 
mass of green stuff as rapidly as possi¬ 
ble. Where a green crop is plowed un¬ 
der only once in four or five years the 
plans would be different, but where we 
put under big crops every year our 
scheme is to make them available at once. 
This is done by packing them where the 
roots of the corn would naturally feed 
and putting on lime. 
You say that you apply fertilizer to 
growing corn by hand. Let me know 
how you apply it so as to prevent it 
from burning the corn. j. w. b. 
I do not suppose our method would 
stand any scientific test. We simply 
take a handful of fertilizer and with a 
twist or flirt of the wrist scatter it along¬ 
side of the hill of corn. The plan is 
not to drop it in a bunch but to cover 
a space six to eight inches long beside 
the growing corn. The cultivator and 
hoe will work it into the ground proper¬ 
ly. One year the men dropped the fer¬ 
tilizer right on the growing corn in the 
hill. I thought it was ruined, but the 
weather continued dry and no damage 
was done. This fertilizer was mainly 
bone and potash, which was not so “hot” 
as acid phosphate would have been. In 
a wet season acid phosphate put right on 
the hill might have injured the corn. A 
good corn fertilizer can be made by 
mixing one part of tankage or dried 
blood, three parts fine bone or acid phos¬ 
phate and one part muriate of potash. 
II. w. c. 
“Don’t you ever change your mind?” 
“Of course,” replied Miss Cayenne. “It 
is very desirable to change your mind 
occasionally in order to call attention to 
the fact that you had any in the first 
place,”—Washington Star. 
“ Doctoring” a Piece of Hard Soil. 
W E have a piece of land lying low, so 
low in fact that the water stands 
on it at times, but on account of 
neighbors we cannot get a fall to drain 
it. I have plowed this piece today, and 
it is baked hard and turns up in chunks. 
The soil is a clay: it doesn’t seem to 
have any humus in it at all. We plowed 
the grass up last Fall and left it open 
all Winter. I am thinking of putting one 
ton of limestone to the acre, harrowing 
it in well and sowing Crimson clover to 
plow under next Spring. Do you think 
this would help it any. and how much 
clover should I put to the acre? Would j 
I better sow it now or wait till later? 
New Haven, Conn. r. r. o. 
Unless this land can be drained in 
some way it is not likely to prove satis¬ 
factory. It is possible that by digging 
deep wells in it you could strike down 
below the subsoil a stratum of sand or 
gravel, which will permit the surface 
water to soak down and away. There 
are some localities where this plan can 
be worked out successfully. Our advice J 
would be to use burnt or slaked lime! 
instead of the ground limestone. On soil! 
of this character you need a strong and | 
quick chemical action, and the slaked I 
lime will give this far better than the 
ground limestone can. You will make 
a mistake in depending upon Crimson 
clover alone as a cover crop. This clover 
is not well adapted for your locality, or 
to this kind of soil. In fact Crimson 
clover is not a sure crop north of Phila¬ 
delphia. although in some seasons it will 
go through and make a success. Our 
plan would be to use at least one ton of 
slaked lime at once, then sow two bushels 
of buckwheat and two pounds of Cow- 
horn turnips to the acre. This ought to 
make heavy growth. About the middle of 
August we would plow this crop under 
the ground, fit the soil and then sow on 
each acre one bushel of rye and 20 
pounds of the seed of Hairy vetch. This 
would make a good growth for the Fall, 
and come in the Spring, and when plowed 
under will supply large quantities of or¬ 
ganic matter—very much more than you 
could hope to get from the Crimson 
clover. 
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The Marauder Crow. 
In an article last Winter on that black 
rascal, the crow, he was defended for his 
good qualities. I do not happen to know 
any, but know many bad qualities. Un¬ 
less the crow is exterminated, or greatly 
reduced in numbers, he will exterminate 
our soug birds. Eggs and young birds 
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