The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1873-10-16
Farm, Garden and Household.


ers will follow it, the quality of cattle
sent to market will be rapidly
changed;
''The price Of cattle fattened for mar
let depends on the symmetry of the
animal as well as the fat "style," as
shippers term it. want here to state
that good blood is important, but not
absolutely necessary, to make what is
termed good seller. In order to fat
ten steer to bring the highest market
price, he must be kept in growing con-
dition from calf, and in no case allow
ed to go hungry. 1t is the starving the
first and second winters which willis
and shrivels up a steer, and causes him
to be sold at reduced price. No
amount of feeding will make him q
first class seller, no matter what his
color or blood. An animal well fed
/ care not what the blood, Texas or not
from calf until the spring he is three
years old, will be smooth, with bones
well covered, and will sell at profit;
while a half-starved animal becomes
crooked i'll the back, bone projecting,
and shriveled up; takes the best part of
the summer to get in condition to
live, and will not be in condition for
market until he is four years old, and
then will bring price which is unsatis-
factory to the producer and to every
one that handles him. This is no the
ory, but q fact deduced from close OBJ
servation, as have tested the plan for
several years.
1t will and does pay to feed corn to
calves and to yearlings. They start out
on grass in the spring, strong and Wig
orous. You are then able to market
bo 1,
years old, weighing 1,40O pounds,
which is heavy enough to bring the
first price. The best steer L sold in
1872 was common native. He had all
he could eat from calf, and was never
hungry. He was handsome animal,
and was worth more per pound than
anything 1 shipped in 1872. He weigh
ed in Chicago 1850 pounds: age, three
years. now have a steer calf eleven
months old, from very ordinary COW.
The calf now May 21) weighs $50
pounds. 1 think it will weigh when
three years old, 1,500 pounds. l do not
wish it understood that 1 am not in ia
vor of improving the blood as well as
feed.
I shipped two Texan steers this
spring, which were three years
old. They were smooth and nice, and
L sold them with lot of Durhams, four
years old, at the same price, and they
were worth as much per pound, and
weighed better according to age. They
were raised and fed by different par
ties.
Mammoth, overgrown steers have
had their day, and are now come down
to the neat, compact, well-fattened ami
NAL, both in hogs and cattle. To ac-
ccomplish this in cattle, good feeding
from a calf is necessary"
Thin and Thick Sowing.
A writer in the London Farmers
Chronicle gives the following as his ex-
perience of thick and thin sowing of
seed. His experiment was made with
oats
The first year we got the best sample
we could of black oats of forty pounds
weight, and sowed them to the extent
Of sack -four bushels) an acre and
the result of this first trial was about
thirty bushels to the acre, weighing
thirty-eight pounds to the bushel. OF
course, the grain was thin, and there
was also an increase of that limited
hairiness at the base of many of the
cones which points to q retrogression
seed. Our next trials were with white
oats of the weight of forty-seven pounds
per bushel seeded sack to the acre.
The results in this case were forty bush
els to the acre of a good even seed, but
weighing only forty-fve pounds per
bushel, that is, two pounds less than
the sample sown. The next year our
oat experiments were considerably
modified, for we had determined to SOW
but two bushels of seed instead of four
bushels to the acre and casting about
to get the heaviest seed in the market,
We procured a sample weighing some
where about fOrty-eight pounds per
bushel. These were sown at the rate
of two bushels to the acre, and resulted
i'll crop of nearly forty bushels to the
acre, weighing as much as the sample
sown. Now, it is worthy of remark
that neighbor's oat crop of the same
year was not only Of the nature of an
experiment, but it was also lesson on
the subject of thick seeding which we
shall not soon forget. This crop, like
our own, was the white Canadian oat,
sown in field of the same kind of soil,
but if anything the land was of better
quality. On seeing the field while the
crop was being cut, the first remark
was "You have seeded too thick -
and sure enough, upon the mistaken
principle that "if you don't put it in,
you can't expect to get it out, more
than sack an acre had been sown and
thus, while in our own case the straws
We're remarkably regular, both in height
and size, the average of the latter being
that of good-sized goose-quill, sur
mounted by panicle Of from 100 to
300 grains of oats, the majority of the
culms of the thick-sown crop, growing
beneath few of the taller and larger
growth, might be compared to crow
quilts, their seeds numbering from five
to twenty. These facts, then, tend to
show that if poor, starved seed is used
it may only make matters worse to SOW
too thickly, as many are apt to do; and
the result of last years oat growth is a
convincing proof that it is not a large
number of small stems which make up
good crop, but a comparatively small
number of fully developed ones.