866 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Hope Farm Notes 
HOW ARE THE HOPE FARM SCRUBS ? 
ERY well, thank you. I used to 
know .on old man who had one re¬ 
ply to questions about his health. “I 
am able to get from the bed to the stove.” 
Our scrubs seem to be able to get from 
the nest to the feed box. They started 
at the tail end of the procession—now 
there are 12 pens behind them, and they 
still seem to be climbing. The following 
table shows what the 10 scrubs did dur¬ 
ing the 31 days of May: 
BIRD 
May Egg-Laying Record. 
BBEEDING 
EGGS 
No. 
1. 
. .B. Rock. 
. . 21 
No. 
2. 
.W. Leghorn. 
, . 22 
No. 
3. 
. 23 
No. 
4. 
. 21 
No. 
5. 
... 28 
No. 
6. 
. Mongrel ....... 
. 25 
No. 
7. 
. 13 
No. 
8 .. 
. 19 
No. 
9. 
. 22 
No. 
10. 
. 19 
There were also eight eggs laid outside 
the trap-nests. These cannot be credited 
to any individual bird, but they make the 
total for the month 221 eggs. 
Now let those gentlemen who laughed 
so heartily, when I entered these scrubs, 
let themselves out for a final roar. There 
are in this contest S2 pens, or 820 birds; 
13 pens of “Rocks” of Barred, White and 
Buff, 10 pens of Wyandottes, 18 pens of 
Reds. 34 of Leghorns and so on. I have 
the owners of these birds on record as 
valuing their pens at from $40 to $100. 
My scrubs cost a little less than $10. 
Now, only two pens of Rocks outlaid the 
scrubs during May. Here is another ta¬ 
ble carrying food for laughter: 
Record for May (31 Days). 
EGGS. 
Hope Farm Scrubs. 221 
Best Barred Rock Pen.— . 224 
Best White Rock Pen. 223 
Best Buff Rock Pen. 199 
Average of all Rocks. 1S6 
Best White Wyandotte. 212 
Best Buff Wyandotte. 195 
Tom Barron’s Wyandottes.208 
Average All Wyandottes.. 190 
Best R. I. Red Pen . 218 
Average All R. I. Reds. 151 
Silver Campine . 215 
Best W. Leghorn.. 258 
Poorest W. Leghorn . 106 
Average W. Leghorn . 220 
Now gentlemen, all together, ha! ha! 
ha! How ridiculously funny these old 
scrubs or “culls” are. Out of 82 pens 
they actually stand No. 20 for May. 
They have beaten Tom Barron’s Wyan¬ 
dottes and laid rings around every pen 
of Reds and Wyandottes in the contest. 
Out of 33 pens of White Leghorns only 
16 beat them. 
When it comes to individual records 
we have another laugh coming. No. 5 
of the scrubs laid 28 eggs in 31 days. 
During the week following this perform¬ 
ance she laid six more. Out of 820 birds 
only three beat No. 5 during May—two 
Barred Rocks and one Buff Leghorn. 
This bird was, and is, an undersized pul¬ 
let with the Barred plumage. Judge 
Card scored her and gave 83 points! 
One of the best practical hen men I know 
told me in March that she would prob¬ 
ably never lay an egg, since she was 
badly affected with “internal parasites.”! 
It looks as if those parasites were eggs! 
The expert who picked her out of a crate 
of chickens in the live poultry market 
said she was a good one. She seemed so 
scrawny and inferior that I did not have 
the nerve to put her in the original pen, 
but sent her as a substitute. One of the 
original hens died and this one took her 
place. Thus I came near rejecting the 
cornerstone of the scrub record. Let us 
keep an eye on No. 5. No. 6 is still 
another good one. This bird seems to be 
a mixture of Red, Brown Leghorn and 
Wyandotte—just one of those calico birds 
you see running about the barnyard. 
The other mongrels show much the same 
mixture. No. 7 is something of a fiz¬ 
zle. Judge Card scored her at 87%, but 
her white ear lobes disqualify her as a 
B. Rock. She may come over yet with 
the eggs. At any rate this collection of 
birds has done far better than I ever ex¬ 
pected and the end is not yet in sight. 
Remember, please, that they hardly be¬ 
gan to lay before March 1. Some of 
those other pens were 250 ahead before 
the scrubs started. That was because my 
birds were not in good condition. They 
all had colds and most of them had been 
starved and mistreated and covered with 
vermin before we bought them. It re¬ 
quired two months at least to get them 
fit I have learned that half of the bat¬ 
tle in these egg contests is having your 
birds in good condition, trained up to the 
day and all ready to start laying. Then 
they get going early and take a lead. On 
another trial I would buy pullets in 
September and train them carefully for 
two months at least. Of course these 
scrubs may peter out at any time now 
and quit laying. I am not bragging about 
them—simply giving their record. If 
they never lay another egg I shall find no 
fault, and I would make no estimate as 
to their final outcome. What they did 
in May however is now history. If they 
were purebred, now we might bank on 
their record, but for years we have been 
taught to believe that you cannot de¬ 
pend on a scrub. We will wait, 
What About It? —I confess that I do 
not know. One man says it’s the feed 
and care. He claims that a good feeder 
with scientific knowledge “can make a 
wooden Indian lay eggs." After this 
May record I am not much inclined to 
doubt it, but what about this? During 
this month of May, 11 of these pure 
blood birds never laid a single egg. I 
know that some of these zeros are held 
at $10 each. There were 63 that laid 
less than 10 eggs during the month. If 
it is a question of feed, what was the 
matter with these hens—some of them 
Leghorns? Then comes the old ques¬ 
tion of the possibility of selecting laying 
hens by their shape and appearance. 
Most poultry men hoot at any such sug¬ 
gestion about using a “system,” but 
what about these scrubs—most of them 
selected in that way? I did not think it 
possible to tell from the looks of a hen 
how many eggs she will lay, but here are 
birds selected from about as inferior a 
lot as you can find anywhere! Stephen 
Francisco, the “certified milk” dairyman, 
says he can select a good dairy cow by 
looking at her face! Of course a man 
like Francisco who has studied thousands 
of cows comes to know a good one almost 
at a glance, but when you come to tell 
a cow’s quality by looking her in the 
face you get it down to a fine point. Yet 
I think Mr. Francisco can come pretty 
close to doing it. I now believe that 
an expert hen man comes to know a 
laying hen by a sort of instinct, so that 
he can actually separate the workers 
from the drones. It seems evident to me 
that many very fine laying hens are sent 
to market and sold as meat because the 
owners are unable to detect them. Evi¬ 
dently some of the so-called experts do 
not know a laying hen when they meet 
her. We have evidence of that in the 
figures of this laying contest. There are 
a number of these 820 hens that have 
not yet laid an egg. Others have laid 
barely a dozen each—even with the care 
which has made my No. 5 shell out 34 
eggs in 36 days! Again, I find that 
some of the pens have failed because two 
or three birds proved to be drones. The 
others are good but their mates fell down. 
Yet these birds all seem to be of much 
the same type. One would naturally ex¬ 
pect that when a club representing a cer¬ 
tain breed entered such a contest the 
birds would all be of a uniform and 
standard type, and much alike. Yet here 
is the May record for three such pens: 
EGGS. 
American Buff Wyandotte Club.146 
Nat’l Columbian Wyandotte Club....213 
White Laced Cornish Club.128 
One of these Buff Wyandottes laid 25 
eggs while another gave only one. The 
Columbian Wyandottes varied from 10 
to 26, and the Cornish from 0 to 16. 
Evidently no man can have much of a 
chance at an egg contest unless he knows 
how to select a uniform lot of hens with¬ 
out any misfits or drones. In one of the 
earlier contests a well-known hen man 
selected a uniform lot of birds as he 
supposed, but one of the best looking 
never laid an egg and this of course 
spoiled his record. 
I find that several pens in this contest 
contain birds which have been bred from 
pedigreed stock. That is, the egg records 
of the mother and also of the grand¬ 
mother on the male side are known. 
These pens stand well in total number of 
eggs, but the birds do not lay uniform¬ 
ly as one might expect them to do. It 
is evident that there are many things 
about a hen which the so-called wise men 
do not know. One of the pens of White 
Wyandottes at the Storrs oontest is said 
to be made up of very high scoring birds 
very uniform by the “standard.” This 
pen has a rather poor egg record, and 
while the hens are said to be very uni¬ 
form in shape and plumage they vary 
greatly in performance. The most im¬ 
portant thing I see about the egg busi¬ 
ness is for a man to devise some sure 
scheme for selecting layers, or else he 
will surely feed robbers and drones. No 
use talking trap-nest to the busy farmer 
—he cannot spend the time required to 
trap his hens. 
I am going to find out what there is in 
egg pedigree in grading up hens. For 
example, take my No. 5 hen. Suppose I 
bred her to a cockerel whose mother had 
a record of 225 eggs in a year. That 
would be following the advioe given dairy¬ 
men to breed for milk or butter, but 
what proportion of improved pullets will 
I get, and how can I pick them out? 
Some of the experts say this is old—it 
has all been settled'—but the records at 
these poultry contests tell us a different 
story. There are several pens valued at 
$100 or more. The eggs from such a 
pen would be valued at 50 cents or more 
each. Yet some of the birds, own sisters 
at that, may lay only half as many eggs 
as the others. The performance of my 
scrubs convinces me that it is possible 
to go into a flock of 50 hens and select 
10 superior layers. I think poultry men. 
in order to succeed, must have something 
of this knowledge, for I believe that own 
sisters or half sisters in a flock of “im¬ 
proved” poultry will vary greatly in 
natural laying ability. 
Strawberries. —Thus far this has 
been our best season. The Marshall de¬ 
mands an abundance of moisture. It is 
a large berry, and unless it can find 
water it will curl up. This Spring was 
wet, and the soil filled with moisture. 
The heavy mulch held this around the 
plants, and the berries have matured per¬ 
fectly. They never were better. Some 
of them are quite as large as Astrachan 
apples and crimson red in color. Still, I 
cannot advise Marshall for general plant¬ 
ing—in fact would not care to sell a large 
number of plants to anyone who ex¬ 
pected great, things from it. We keep on 
planting the variety because our trade 
demands it, and our soil seems just suit¬ 
ed to it. Joe looks well this year and 
Chesapeake is an old-time favorite. 
What would you recommend to sow 
for Summer pasture for cows during Au¬ 
gust, at this elevation (1,500 feet) and 
climate? How would rape do, and how 
much to the acre? When sown? I want 
something to help out my natural Sum¬ 
mer pasture. a. o. c. 
New York. 
Rape will not do for a cow pasture. 
It gives the milk a “turnipy” taste. It 
is all right for hogs or beef cattle, but 
not for cows. I would not try to seed 
a pasture, but would prepare for soiling 
the cows. That means cutting green fod¬ 
der and carrying it to the cattle. There 
is nothing better in most situations than 
corn fodder seeded thickly in drills. This 
makes a heavy crop. It can be cut and 
fed out in racks in the pasture or hauled 
to the barn. Japanese millet is another 
good one; also Soy beans. We usually 
depend on corn fodder, and it carries us 
through. H. w. c. 
A Question of Land Title. 
I N 1903 A sells a piece of woodland to 
B, who cuts the timber, but neglects 
to record his deed till 190S. In the 
meantime, A dies and his son (and exe¬ 
cutor), C. sells the same piece of land in 
1907 to D, who promptly puts his war¬ 
ranty deed therefor on record. In 1914. 
when B wishes to sell, it is discovered 
that the same piece of land is on record 
as belonging to two different parties. B 
and D. I) has paid taxes from 1907. 
What is the just solution of the tangle? 
Massachusetts. ir. h. p. 
Every deed should be recorded as soon 
after it is executed as may be possible, 
and B should have had his deed recorded. 
D, not knowing that B held the title to 
the property, and being an innocent pur¬ 
chaser for value and having recorded his 
deed, is now the rightful owner of the 
property. Of course, A and his executor 
C have no right to benefit by the two 
sales of the same piece of property to 
different persons and B will have a right 
of action against C, as executor, for the 
damage he has sustained by the sale of 
his property. This takes for granted that 
D did not know of the sale of the land 
to B. M. D. 
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A READY—TO CULTIVATE 
FARM 
IN 
GEORGIA’S COASTAL PLAIN 
You have possibly read the report of 
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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
333 WEST 30th ST., NEW YORK. 
