1068 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
OWN YOUR OWN 
THRESHER 
To be able to thresh when your 
grain is just right for threshing— 
and when you are just ready- 
means a yearly saving of grain and 
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You owe it to yourself to at least 
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away from the wasteful and un¬ 
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your turn for a custom thresher 
to come around. The weather 
does not spare your grain while 
you are waiting. 
If you own a 
you thresh when YOU are ready—not 
when someone else is ready. Extra 
labor—always costly and hard to get- 
will not need to stand idle waiting for 
the “threshing rig” to arrive. The in¬ 
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you can invest in a Gray without taking 
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Write today for our catalog and 
suggestion on the proper equip¬ 
ment. You’ll be surprised at the 
moderate cost. 
A. W. Gray’s Sons, Inc., 
BoxA-3Poultney, Vt. 
Factory at Middletown Springs, Vt. 
GET THIS CATALOGUE 
A. W. Gray’s Sow,-, Inc 
—Please send me you) 
catalog and suggest prop¬ 
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devoting about — acrei 
to grain crops. Also quoti 
prices. 
Address 
\T/\#9 Be ready for the haying season 
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IRELAND MACHINE & FOUNDRY CO. 
11.13 STATE STREET, - NORWICH. N. V. 
JOHN DEERE PLOW CO., Distributors 
r $3.25 BOX^ 
guaranteed to giv* 
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money refunded. 
$1.10 Box sufficient 
for ordinary cases. 
Price includes war tax. 
Postpaid on receipt of price. 
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Garden and Poultry 
Culture of Rhubarb and Gooseberries 
Will you give us whatever information 
you can about the right way to set out 
and care for rhubarb and gooseberries? 
Though ground has been abundantly fer¬ 
tilized with well-rotted manure, the rhu¬ 
barb seems to “run out”; stems grow 
smaller aud fewer; seed stems appear al¬ 
most with the first growth in the Spring. 
We wish to find out where the trouble 
lies and start again, right, if possible, as 
the rhubarb is valuable in this “fruitless” 
land. I have not tried gooseberries be¬ 
fore. w. E. II. 
Eva, Okla. 
The rhubarb of our gardens is said to 
have originally come from the colder re¬ 
gions of Asia, where it grows and thrives 
naturally and is very long lived. In my 
observations of this plant, covering a 
period of many years, I find that where the 
Winters are cold and of long duration 
the plant will live many years, and where 
the Winters are mild and short it will 
die out in two or three years. Just what 
is the reason of its being so short lived 
where the Winters are mild and of short 
duration I am unable to state positively, 
but am strongly inclined to the belief that 
the long growing season produces ex¬ 
haustion of the root systems, causing the 
plant's early death. When in the Mid¬ 
dle South I began a series of experiments 
with this plant which, if I could have re¬ 
mained long enough to carry them out to 
with no feathers. The little feathers 
which had grown were off again, and this 
portion extending out to the nock. I 
took the 11 chicks and mother hen and 
rubbed them with a mixture of sulphur 
and lard to the affected spots. Later 
tiwo of them, which appeared worse than 
the others, died, possibly directly from 
the cold weather and indirectly from the 
soreness, which, I presume, was caused 
by lice. I removed the old hen from 
the chicks and painted them as above 
stated, and kept them in a warm room 
for the night. Please state if I have 
correctly diagnosed their ailment, and 
given proper treatment? J. M. M. 
Virginia. 
I do not think that the loss of the 
feathers noted was a result of the pres¬ 
ence of lice, though it is possible that 
the depluming mite is present and has 
caused the loss of feathers over the bare 
spots. If so, your treatment was all 
right, butt, perhaps, a little too vigorous 
for such young chicks. Simple vaseline 
or lard rubbed into the skin over the af¬ 
fected parts will probably suffice for 
treatment, with protection of the chicks 
from exposure and suitable food. 
M. B. D. 
Air Cell in Incubation 
I am much interested in the manage¬ 
ment of incubators, and I would like in¬ 
formation about the control of the air cell. 
The Coming Generation on the Farm. Fig. 318 
a definite conclusion, would have been of 
considerable value. My idea was to treat 
the rhubarb as a triennial instead of per¬ 
ennial, and to raise plants from seed of 
one’s own raising. Instead of waiting un¬ 
til Spring to sow them, my plan was to 
sow them as soon as ripe in well-prepared, 
heavily manured soil (the seed will come 
up very quickly if sown soon as ripe). 
They should be sown where the plants are 
to stand, in rows 8 ft. or so apart, and 
the seed sown thinly in the rows. When 
the little plants have made a second or 
third set of true leaves, thin them out to 
stand 15 to 18 in. apart in the row. If 
the plants are kept free from weeds and 
well cultivated many of them will make 
leaf stalks large enough to use by early 
Fall, and give almost a full crop the fol¬ 
lowing year. Now by treating the plant 
as a triennial and making a new sowing 
every third year I believe the growing of 
rhubarb in the Middle South and South¬ 
west can be made a proposition of assur¬ 
ance. instead of one of doubt and disap¬ 
pointment. Allow some of your plants 
to ripen seed this year, and try the plan 
as stated above, and I tihink you will 
solve your problem all right. All seed 
stalks should be cut down or pulled off 
when small except those you wish to pro¬ 
duce seed. K. 
Chicks Lose Feathers 
I have some eight-weeks-old White 
Leghorn chicks. About two weeks ago 
I noticed that under the wings was bare, 
What effect does moisture have on the 
air cell, if any? What effect does ven¬ 
tilation have? Can the air cell be con¬ 
trolled by either factor? s. K. 
As a practical matter in incubation, 
definite attempts to control the size of 
the air cell are hardly justified. If in¬ 
cubating conditions are what they should 
be. the air cell will take care of itself and 
only a very marked variation from the 
normal would need to be given attention. 
The air cell varies in size in different 
eggs kept under the same conditions, as it 
also varies in position. Anything that 
increases the rate of evaporation through 
(he pores of (lie shell would hasten (lie 
development of the air cell. Increased 
ventilation of the machine and a decrease 
in the moisture of the air within the 
machine would have this effect. On the 
other hand, decreased ventilation and 
added moisture would retard the develop¬ 
ment of the cell. 
The air cell, at first very small, in¬ 
creases in size quite regularly from the 
first to the nineteenth day, at which time 
it should occupy about one-fifth of the 
space within the shell. As suggested, 
however, watching the air cell is hardly 
a practicable way of keeping tab on the 
work of the incubator, and practical op¬ 
erators give their attention to keeping 
the temperature of the machine at the 
proper point and supplying any needed 
additional moisture to the eggs either by 
moisture pans in incubators, with which 
these are supplied, or by adding to that 
June 12, 1920 
of the incubator room by sprinkling the 
floors daily. M. b. d. 
Poor Hatch 
What can be the matter with my hatch? 
The eggs looked fine during the whole 
hatch. Every germ was strong and alive. 
I broke one egg on the nineteenth day 
and found a large chick dead. I broke a 
few more and found them the same as 
the first. The eggs were from my own 
stock and put in an incubator. 2.800 size. 
The chicks died in the last stage. I fol¬ 
lowed the directions to a minute. What 
can be the matter? a. s. 
New York. 
No one knows why so many chicks 
reach full development, but die before 
hatching. Many such are found in prac¬ 
tically all incubator hatches, even when 
the proportion of living chicks is high. 
In some cases the trouble may be laid to 
improper care of the breeding stock, re¬ 
sulting in low vitality and inability of 
the germs to fully complete the life cycle. 
Improper conditions in incubation are 
doubtless also responsible at times for 
the same condition, but the fact remains 
that even when all conditions for a good 
hatch are present there will be some 
chicks that, do not leave the shell. When 
this proportion of unhatched chicks is 
disproportionately large there should be a 
review of all the. facts regarding the mat¬ 
ter that are known, and an effort should 
be made to find any cause that may exist 
in care of breeding stock, care of eggs 
before incubation, operation of incubator 
or elsewhere in the cycle. Without 
knowing all the conditions present it 
would, of course, be impossible for any 
one at a distance to point out possible 
sources of trouble. m. b. d. 
Poultry Feeding: Correspondence Course 
in Henkeeping. 
_ 1. I would like a full balanced ra¬ 
tion of scratch feed for hens and pullets, 
also a full balanced ration of dry mash, 
and a good ration for chicks to keep 
them going from hatching to maturity. 
Are cowpeas fed to hens whole or 
cracked? A balanced ration for hens 
should contain nearly the same number 
of yolks and. whites in the whole combina¬ 
tion of foods, should it not? What 
amount of food should a laying hen con¬ 
sume for a day? 2. Do you consider 
the Black Leghorn as good as or equal 
to the White Leghorn for egg production? 
3. I received a booklet from the Amer¬ 
ican School of Poultry Husbandry at 
Kansas City, Mo., asking me to take a 
course by mail in poultry keeping, and 
a special cut in half rate for the course. 
If it is so good I should not think they 
would need to cut the rates to get plenty 
of scholars. What is their standing, 
and do you think it would pay to take it? 
Regular price is .$50. special rate $25 and 
$30 by installments—sounds fishy to me. 
Orleans Co., N. Y. w. c. M. 
A scratch grain mixture containing 
one-half part whole or cracked corn and 
the other half made up of wheat, barley, 
oats aud buckwheat, or such of them as 
are available, to be fed in connection with 
a mash made up of equal parts of corn 
meal, wheat bran, middlings, ground oats, 
gluten feed and beef scrap, would con¬ 
stitute a well-balanced ration for laying 
hens. A balanced ration is not one con¬ 
taining materials for an equal number 
of yolks and whites but one in which the 
protein and carbohydrate, or egg produc¬ 
ing and heat and energy producing ele¬ 
ments are combined in such proportions 
that enough of each will be furnished 
2. Young chicks should have corn and 
wheat and a mash mixture similar to 
the following: wheat bran, middlings, 
cornmeal, ground oats and beef scrap, 
all in equal parts. For chicks under 
four weeks of age the wheat may be 
cracked and finely cracked corn should 
be used. The hulls also should be sifted 
from the ground oats and the coarser 
parts from the beef scrap. Cow peas as 
a part of the poultry ration do not seem 
to be very well known in the Northern 
States. I believe, however, that they are 
used where they are available and that 
they form a part of many commercial 
poultry rations. 
The amount of food consumed per day 
varies with the breed, number of eggs 
being laid and other conditions. The 
heavier breeds consume more than do the 
lighter and all breeds more during the 
season of high production. In general 
terms the food consumption of laying 
hens may be said to be between 80 and 
85 pounds each per year or about three 
and one half ounces per day, this being 
I he amount of whole and ground grain, 
exclusive of green stuff, etc. 
3. I do not. consider any other variety 
or breed equal to the Single Comb White 
Leghorn in egg production, though indi¬ 
vidual flocks have beaten the Leghorn 
in laying contests. 
4. I have never known of any cor¬ 
respondence courses in anything that 
seemed to me worth their cost. Read¬ 
ing the bulletins of the State experiment 
stations, such books upon poultry culture 
as are not published to boom some “sys¬ 
tem” or swell the volume of cheap poul¬ 
try literature for advertising or premium 
purposes and actual experience in the 
work will do more to make an intelligent 
poultryman than any correspondence 
course possibly can. If you wish to 
read and do not know what to read, ask 
your State College of Agriculture at 
Ithaca, N. Y. for their bulletins upon 
poultry culture and advice as to books 
worth purchasing and reading. M. B. D. 
