Wichita eagle., 1889-10-17
CONFLICTING ADVICE.
Burdette Beads Up on Farming and
Chicken Raising and Gets All Mixed Up.

Buriette Beads Up on Farming and
Chicken Raising and Gets All Mixed Up.
Talk about Discussions in religion, about
! warning creeds and battling churches, if you
want to get knee deep in a swamp Of conflict
ing views and opinions, wade through file
of agricultural papers. Now, there's nothing
vague. intangible, invisible and abstract In
agriculture. The ground is real and tho
crops are sometimes real; in the case of an
amateur gardener who moves out Of town
because he can save years rent on June
peas, grant you there is degree Of abstrac-
ton that makes the science of aerated meta
physics solid as a football match. But in
the soft and thawing weeks of spring loan
farm in clay country is about as real as
they make 'em.
Butnow, l read in my favorite agricultural
paper the other day that man who ''had a
patch clay over rock basted 1T heavily with
coal ashes" and rnyl Talk about richness!
And cropsl Such melonsi And peasl And
such corni Don't talk 1 went straight
away to the kitchen and gave orders that
every handful of coal ashes WIS to be placed
in fruit jars and kept in the refrigerator
until such time as could have it applied to
the garden. No matter what price the
neighbors might offer for it, not an ounce of
it was to be sold
Then went back to the desk and turned
over to the next page Of the paper, and
farmer and market gardener in Hennessy
county said that mixture Of pounded glass,
rock SALT alkah and birthstone, poured on red
hot, was far preferable, as fertilizer, tocoal
ashes He said he had killed every tree in
haol tl,rr<, i<cIo
garden in the Pomona valley bowling waste
by light appicationso of coal ashes My blood
ran cold as l fastened out once more to mott
fy the seneschal that if found one flake of
coal ashes about the castle within fifteen
minutes from the ukase too-kaz) 1would hang
a few traitors, more or less, from the fourth
story hook in the MARITIME tower.
Then I went back and read that any man
who kept hens and wanted eggs must be pre-
pared to spend most Of bis income on corn,
but it would be the best investment he ever
made. Nothing like corn, not cracked, but fed
in whole grains, for making hens lay; it made
them lay seven times week when nothing
else would. and in fact it was the only thing
that would make henslay all the year round.
Straightway ordered carload OF corn to
be purchased for the cackling denizens Of
Crocus Hall, but before the messenger had set
forth to corner the corn market read from
another expert that Dough on Rats" was
much better for hens than corn, inasmuch as
it killed them at once, thereby saving great
expense Of keeping and was quite as produc-
tive when viewed as an egg plant He closed
a narrative Of his experience with corn by
piously hoping that the man who first sug
gested the destruction of ali the poultry in
America by the use of corn as food might
never, in this world OF the next, be permitted
TO eat q pullet, or taste custard, omelette, egg
nog, or anything else in which the hen or her
product entered as a component part. He
said yoa must feed little else but than pound
ed bone
While I was wondering whose bones I
would like to pound my eye fell upon the tes-
tirnonial Of one of the leading poulterers in
New York state, who said that he had lost
about ninety-eigiH Of the finest hens that
ever acted the fool in their sanest moments,
by the ignorance or malice of hired man,
VINO had mixed a spoonful of pounded bone
in their feed one Sunday morning, while he,
the owner, was at.church. He said that when
he came home and found what had been done
he chased the soulless imbecile clear across
the township with neck yoke, and IL he'd a
caught him he'd kicked him to death With
a hay tedder.
So l let up onsthe corner and the market
broke all to pieces I am now feeding my
hens on anything they like, same as have
been doing all summer. They wander around
the place and mike their own selection, and
if there is anything that I particularly don't
want them TO have they use it for dessert.
However there are lust two things in ag and
poultri culture would like to know: What
is good to put on land, and what is the best
kind of feed to-scatter about your estate to
make your hens lay and poison your neigh
boris-Burdette in Brooklyn Eagle