60 
THE RURAL, HEW-YORKER 
to take a really poor piece of land, the genuine 
article, sow it to Sweet clover, make the land rich 
and get rich in the bargain, selling seed to others, 
all in one or two years. It may have been done 
elsewhere, but I would not advise trying it. Getting 
Sweet clover well established on poor soil, accord¬ 
ing to our experience, would be a slow process, but 
I believe considerable time could be saved by using 
Sweet clover soil. Once given a start it will estab¬ 
lish itself almost anywhere within reason. 
Livingston Co., N. Y. j. c. R. 
THE “EGGS FOR HATCHING” PROBLEM. 
T IIE season will soon he here when the most 
unsatisfactory part of the poultry business 
will begin. I refer to the buying and sell¬ 
ing of eggs for hatching. F re are a few reflections 
on the subject from the standpoint of both the buy¬ 
er and the seller. 
First, what does the buyer purchase? He wants 
not eggs, hut chicks; but he buys eggs on the chance 
of getting twice as many chicks as he could if he 
bought chicks already hatched. Therefore, what he 
really buys, is a chance 1o yet chicks. What does 
the seller sell? Precisely the same thing; he would 
not till his part of the contract if he sent infertile 
eggs that had no chance of producing chicks. So he 
must assure himself by tests of his eggs from time 
to time, that he is furnishing fertile eggs. But 
when he has delivered fertile eggs properly packed, 
to the common carrier (the express company) hasn't 
the seller then fully performed his part? 
But part of the "chance” which has been bought 
and sold, is the risk of transportation. Should the 
buyer or the seller assume this risk? Or, should 
it be equally divided? It seems to me the last propo¬ 
sition is the fair one. It is not right that the whole 
risk should be placed on either the buyer or the 
seller. If then, the eggs are spoiled in transporta¬ 
tion, the seller should duplicate the order for half 
I.rice; and having done that, assuming that he has 
sent fertile eggs properly packed, he has fully per¬ 
formed his part of the contract. 
Many breeders duplicate the order gratis, when 
the buyer reports “infertile eggs” or an unsatisfac¬ 
tory hatch. I did it myself for many years, consol¬ 
ing myself for the evident injustice of it. by the 
thought that it paid to be liberal, and to satisfy the 
customer. With cheap eggs produced in abundance, 
this policy may be pursued without much loss; but 
it is quite a different matter when only a limited 
number of valuable eggs are being produced and 
the demand is far greater than the supply. And 
it is with just such eggs that the temptation is 
greatest to “get another setting for nothing,” or for 
half price, by reporting “spoiled eggs.” But I have 
confidence enough in my fellow man to think that 
this very rarely happens, and when it does, the 
swindler does not have the best of it. I would a 
hundred times rather he the one swindled than to 
be the swindler. 
Occasionally there are other risks than the rough 
handling of the express companies. Jealousy of the 
buyer or seller, or unfriendliness, may be the cause 
of the box being violently shaken with the intent 
to spoil the eggs. A case occurred where I wrote 
the person, after two unsuccessful attempts to get 
fertile eggs to him, to send me the name of some 
neighbor to whom they might be shipped, and the 
eggs so shipped proved fertile enough. But this 
does not occur often enough to cut much figure. 
Very little fault is ever found by old breeders; 
it is the amateur, the new beginner, who does near¬ 
ly all the “kicking.” And sometimes he doesn’t 
know when or how to test the eggs. I have had a 
claim of “infertility” made by a party who wrote 
that he “did not test the eggs until the twenty-sec¬ 
ond dan” and “that they were all infertile,” by 
which he meant that they were “rotten”; not know¬ 
ing that their being “rotten” was proof that they 
had been fertile. It is the living germ’s death in 
the shell, that sets up the decay and makes the 
rotten egg. A claim of “infertility” under such cir¬ 
cumstances, would be laughable were it not for the 
fact that the buyer honestly thinks that he is en¬ 
titled to redress. I received eggs from England 
where nearly every egg was liquefied; the vibra¬ 
tion on the steamer had broken the membrane sep¬ 
arating the yolk from the white, and the contents 
were thoroughly mixed. This could be easily seen 
by holding the egg horizontally before the testing 
light, the air chamber remaining at the top of the 
egg, no matter how quickly it was revolved. Pre¬ 
cisely the same thing occurred in two instances 
where eggs were sent from Connecticut to New Jer¬ 
sey; and eggs sent at same time from the same 
pen, that had to go 150 miles by steamer after reach¬ 
ing Seattle—’way up to the northwest corner of 
the United States—hatched fairly well. One man 
reports "44 chicks from the 4S eggs”; another in the 
same mail, “every egg rotten, not a chick.” The 
first brings a smile to your face and happiness to 
your heart, the second just the reverse. Yet the 
same care has been taken in both cases. It is such 
contradictory experiences that have driven many 
breeders to refuse absolutely to sell eggs for hatch¬ 
ing. The day-old chick business shows “the way 
out” for those who have the time and the facilities 
for continuous hatching. For those who have not. 
the old way will still have to answer, but buyer and 
Silo Among The Hills. Fig. 16. 
seller should try to look at the case from the other 
man’s standpoint, as well as from their own, ask¬ 
ing nothing but what they would be willing to grant 
were the case reversed. For valuable eggs the best 
way is to stamp each egg. or failing a stamp, write 
your initials on each egg with an indelible pencil, 
then require the eggs to lie tested by the seventh 
day, and all clear eggs to be returned to the send¬ 
er. to be replaced with fertile ones, or a 
proportion of the cost returned, as may be 
agreed. And don’t he too ready to think that the 
seller is a cheat because you have a poor hatch; 
remember that just one cockerel raised from those 
may be worth twice what you paid for them: on tiie 
other side don’t think that the man is a fraud, and 
trying to get another setting for nothing, who re¬ 
ports a poor hatch or no hatch. The chances are 
that both are good honest men, and willing to do 
what is right. geo. a. cosgrove. 
THE SILO AND THE HILL FARMER. 
T HERE seems to be some question among farm¬ 
ers generally whether the silo is more of a 
money-maker for the owner of rich level land 
than for the hill farmer who finds it difficult to pro¬ 
duce cheap crops of corn. Quite a number of 
writers contend that the feeding of silage in the corn 
belt is the most paying, because the silo can be 
tilled much more cheaply than on thin soils of higher 
elevations. However, if one stops to think, the silo 
is a much better investment for the hill farmer and 
the owner of impoverished soils than for any other 
class of land-owner. Silage is first of all a cheap 
feed, saving as it does the cornstalks for food. 
Why, then, is not the feeding of silage of much 
more importance to the man who is scarce of feed 
than to the farmer on fertile soil, where huge straw 
stacks rot down each Winter and cornstalks are 
This Wyandotte Laid 267 Eggs In One Year. 
Fig. 17. 
burned each Spring to get them out of the way? 
More and more hill farmers throughout our sec¬ 
tion of Southeastern Ohio are putting up silos, as 
they see the advantage of saving all of their corn 
for feeding purposes. Almost invariably, once a 
silo has passed through a feeding season, its owner 
is found striving to refill it from less acres, add to 
its capacity or build another silo. 
Often we have found that the farmer must cut 
the corn from 10 and even 11 acres to fill an 80- 
ton silo, and even then he considers it a paying 
January 1C, 
proposition. However, any number of land-owners, 
even high among the hills, are filling a 75-ton silo 
with corn from five acres of land. It soon becomes 
apparent to the stock feeder that by the proper use 
of the manure from his barns where the silage is 
fed, he can so increase the yield of corn that 15 
tons to the acre is an average crop of silage corn. 
Then if the hill farmer has but a limited amount 
of crop land, he can raise sufficient roughage to 
winter all the stock he can pasture on his more 
hilly grass lands. 
There is no cheaper way to use crop land in 
connection with stock raising than by planting it 
to silage corn. One acre of average land will pro¬ 
duce roughage to winter from three to four grown 
cattle. If planted to any other crop not ensiloed, one 
acre will very seldom produce feed for more than 
one head of stock six months. Therefore the silo 
comes forward as the one strong factor in the re¬ 
claiming of impoverished land, be it hilly or in 
more favored localities. More live stock can lie 
kept each year on such land, for the increasing 
yields of silage corn due to the feeding of it on the 
farm steadily add to the land’s fertility. 
Ohio. h. Bi COBB. 
GOOD WYANDOTTE LAYERS. 
HE II. N.-Y. has its opinion about the laying 
qualities of most blue ribbon or fancy show¬ 
room poultry, yet we are always open to con¬ 
viction. Speaking of “ideal” Wyandottes we have 
called them “dumplings” and expressed our doubt 
as to their ability to lay any large number of eggs. 
Breeders of “dumplings” have ruffled their feathers 
over this, but very few of them seem to have gone 
into an egg-laying contest to prove the laying qual¬ 
ities of their birds. We are ready at any time to 
print the picture of any “dumpling” that comes for¬ 
ward with a certified record from an egg-laying 
contest. 
Attention was called to the excellent record of 
the pen of five Wyandottes entered at the Thorn- 
dale contest by Mr. T. J. McConnell. These birds 
laid 1,068 eggs in a year—an average of 216 or 
over. The individual records were 143, 267, 211), 
200, 238—certainly a very fine performance. Mr. 
McConnell is well known as a breeder of Standard 
Wyandottes and as a show-room winner, and he 
takes a very sensible view of this utility proposition. 
A picture of the best layer among this pen of five 
(record 267 eggs) is shown at Fig. 17. Now, this 
is certainly no “dumpling,” but Mr. McConnell 
states that a hen can be “posed” to show a certain 
type—that is with her head down and neck stretched 
out she will appear longer than otherwise. We leave 
that for the experts to settle. At any rate this is 
a good hen. 
The following extracts from a letter recently re¬ 
ceived from Mr. McConnell will interest our readers: 
It is possible that some breeders of exhibition Wyan¬ 
dottes have neglected the laying qualities of their birds 
in their ambition to excel in the show-room, and so 
those who have been breeding for eggs exclusively with- 
.. out regard to type, have come to believe that type in 
the exhibition bird was to blame for the low egg pro¬ 
duction, but this I believe is a rather hasty conclusion, 
as high egg production and low egg production are not 
confined to either type. * * * I try hard to get 
type and utility in the same individuals. I get a fair 
percentage of very good exhibition birds and a fair 
percentage that are not show birds even from the same 
mating, and I believe all breeders of Standard birds 
have the same experience, for “the best laid schemes 
of mice and men gang aft a-gley.” It is possible that 
those who pay little attention to the egg-producing 
qualities of their birds get a larger percentage of show 
birds than the dual-purpose breeder, but of this one 
thing I am thoroughly satisfied, that there is nothing 
in the type of the Standard Wyandotte as bred by the 
fancier, to hinder a high and profitable egg production. 
Of this I have ample proof in the birds I entered in 
the first contest at Storrs. These birds were ideal ac¬ 
cording to the opinion .of .every fancier who saw them 
'and the two best type birds were the best layers in the 
pen. They were all late hatched birds and did not be¬ 
gin laying until the contest was well advanced. The 
record of the two best layers was 213 and 215. A flock 
of birds like these would not drive their owner to the 
poorhouse. I purpose exhibiting these birds at Madi¬ 
son Square in February with their dam, which will be 
six years old in the Spring and still retains the appear¬ 
ance of a two-year-old. She was awarded first and 
special at Scranton in 1913 by Judge Bean. 
The question of length of body is one that is diffi¬ 
cult to decide. The true exhibition type Wyandotte is 
so heavily cushioned, presenting a beautiful curve from 
the head to the tail, that it deceives the eye as to the 
real length of the bird, for instance, I had a very short, 
blocky-looking bird which Mr. R. F. Alden, a well- 
known Wyandotte judge, pronounced altogether too 
short. This bird was extremely heavily cushioned. The 
day before Christmas I killed this bird and two other 
male birds that were so heavily cushioned and pre¬ 
sented a straight-line back appearance, and would have 
been judged by so-called utility breeders as a long-back 
bird. I took the trouble to measure the length of these 
birds after they were picked, the bird that was heavily 
cushioned and pronounced too short, measured an inch 
longer on the back than either of the other two birds. 
One of the strongest advocates of a utility type stated 
in a letter to me that there was nothing in the out¬ 
ward appearance of a hen to indicate ovarian activity, 
that it was her internals that control the situation, 
that depth of body did not affect in the slightest degree 
the egg-producing qualities of the bird. If this is true 
and 1 believe it is, then why all this noise about type? 
