The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
39 
THE MAILBAG 
Skunk as a Poultry Thief 
I differ somewhat, in regard to a skunk, 
with Frederick Megill, page 1377. I am 
on a farm with my father, and as a side 
line had two geese and a gander. From 
them I managed to save seven goslings, 
and had them in fine shape. I was think¬ 
ing what a nice dinner they would make 
for me and some of my friends for 
Thanksgiving and Christmas. But my 
friends or I never enjoyed those dinners, 
for about the 12th of September a female 
skunk came one night and took four of 
the goslings. The next night I put them 
in another place. But Mrs. Skunk was 
on her job, for she got the other three. 
Then the following night I put the three 
old ones in the coop where the skunk got 
the first four, and set some traps around 
the coop, and about three o’clock in the 
morning my Airedale pup began to bark, 
and upon going to my traps found Mrs. 
Skunk. So since that time I have had 
no use for a skunk. ’ p. a. 
Chazy, N. Y. 
Mending a Leaky Tank 
I would like to give D'. W. I., page 
1381, my experience with an attic tank. 
Our tank is 44 inches long, 28 inches 
wide and 26 inches deep. It is copper, 
and was put in 10 years ago last Fall. 
In less than four years it began to leak. 
I tried having it soldered without much 
success. I was then advised to paint the 
inside with cement and fine flour, two 
parts cement to one of flour. This was 
applied with a stiff brush, and was all 
right for about two years, when it took 
to leaking again. I then took the same 
preparation, wetted it to form a thick 
paste, and applied a very thin coat with 
a trowel. It has been perfectly tight 
since this last application. L. F. GUAY. 
Massachusetts. 
Pasturing Hogs in Peach Orchard 
Would it be a good plan to pasture 
hogs in a peach orchard? L. u. M. 
Massachusetts. 
We did not find it so with low-headed 
trees. The hogs root and dig around the 
trunks of the trees, hunting for grubs 
and borers. They gnaw and break the 
lower branches. With high-headed trees 
you can keep the hogs away by driving 
three stout stakes around the tree and 
stringing three or four turns of barbed 
wire around them. That keeps the hogs 
from rubbing, but they dig too much and 
will get a good share of the fruit. We 
have seen a hog rear on his hind legs, get 
a limb in his mouth and shake the fruit 
down. Hogs are useful in orchards of 
older apple trees, well staked, but we 
should keep them out of peach orchards. 
Painting Faded Matting 
Tell W. M. W., whose inquiry is on page 
1340, that faded matting can be painted 
with ordinary house paint. I had a rug of 
this material which was faded and spotted. 
I painted it a dark green and used it on 
the porch. It proved to be very satisfac¬ 
tory, and wore remarkably well consid¬ 
ering the wear and tear it had been given 
before I painted it. B. H. p. 
Connecticut. 
Answering the request for experience 
on page 1349, I would like to tell W. M. 
W. how we dressed over a faded erex 
matting for our piazza floor. My hus¬ 
band nailed the matting to the south 
side of the barn. I got some of the green 
paint often used on blinds. This I di¬ 
luted with turpentine and applied with a 
common paint brush to the matting. It 
was quickly absorbed; a second coat was 
needed, and a third would have been even 
better. However, it looks well and has 
not faded during the Summer. F. n. p. 
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Country Hide Packer Hide 
Good hides make your cattle 
worth more money 
Leather tanners are very careful about 
the hides they buy. 
They want hides that are as nearly 
perfect as possible — hides that are 
without cuts and scores, and that are 
properly cured. 
There are two classes of hides on the 
market—“country hides” and “packer 
hides.” 
Country hides are those taken off by 
small butchers and farmers. Packer 
hides are those taken off by the packers. 
* * * 
To take a hide off correctly is not easy. 
Unless great skill is used the hide will 
be marred by cuts and scores. 
The packers have made a careful study 
of hides. They have trained experts 
who do nothing else but take them off. 
Hence, packer hides have few cuts 
and scores, and are uniformly and 
properly cured. 
Swift & Company sorts its cured hides 
into grades or classes, according to qual¬ 
ity and to the purposes for which they 
are best adapted. 
Some country hides are good; others 
are very poor. 
They usually have cuts and scores and 
are not cured so well. Some have also 
begun to deteriorate because of being 
held too long. Besides, they cannot be 
Swift & Company, U.S.A. 
A nation-wide organization owned by more than 23,000 stockholders 
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graded so uniformly. In the same batch 
there are both good and poor hides. 
Because of this superiority of packer 
hides, tanners pay from two to five cents 
a pound more for them. If country 
hides were as good, tanners would gladly 
pay an equal price. 
This increased value of packer hides 
means that you get for your cattle from 
$1 to $3 or more per head, additional. 
Swift & Company does not deal in coun¬ 
try hides at all, and has no interest in 
their purchase or sale. It is the hide 
dealers and tanners who notice the differ¬ 
ence in quality, and pay accordingly. 
Swift & Company uses skill in taking 
off hides, not because it wants to see 
country hides bring lower prices—but 
because it is part of its policy to produce 
articles of the highest quality. 
* * * 
This is only one way the packer has 
increased the value of your cattle. Many 
other by-products have been improved 
in a similar way. 
Swift & Company is constantly on the 
lookout for new ways to improve the 
value of its products, and hence to make 
your cattle worth more money to you. 
When Swift & Company says that its 
profit on beef averages yi of a cent a 
pound, this includes the profit from the 
sale of hides. 
Acorns for Hogs 
Your article on acorns on page 1398 is 
of interest to me, as I have been trying 
English oak acorns in a feeding experiment 
on hogs the past Fall. Many years ago a 
ship-builder living in Duxbury, Mass., in¬ 
troduced the English oak, which became 
acclimated and is well established 
throughout the town. It comes into bear¬ 
ing when 10 to 15 years old, is a very 
heavy cropper, and bears a large, sweet 
acorn that makes a very good food for 
hogs, the animals preferring these acorns 
to corn. From a tree 12 feet high and 
eight inches in diameter I picked up in 
an hour 16 quarts of acorns. As the 
trees branch out quite close to the ground 
I was able to begin picking before the 
acorns were ripe. With the first frost 
they began to fall, and with very little 
time spent in the work I secured from 
day to day over five bushels which I fed 
to the hogs and brought them forward rap¬ 
idly. Care must be taken to feed some¬ 
thing laxative, like apples and stock feed, 
or constipation sets in, especially where 
hogs are confined. Imagine an acre of 
these trees surrounded by a 4-ft. fence. 
The trees, 15 to 20 years old, should 
yield from that time on for 50 to 100 
years food enough to carry a dozen hogs 
through the fattening season from Sep¬ 
tember 15 to November 15 at hardly any 
other expense to the owner. The oak tree 
itself is superior in every way to our red 
oak, the wood being heavier, and as good 
grain as our white oak. c. B. 
Dorchester, Mass. 
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i 
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