Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1908-02-28
THE AMEs SHORT COURSE.
Paper Read by VIM. G. Kunes Be
fore the Farmers Institute.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentle
men: When our chairman asked me
to go to Ames and attend the short
course, he said "you just make notes
of the good points and tell it to us at
the institute. If l had done that
should have had stenographer for
everything that heard or saw demon
strated in my two weeks at Ames We're
good points.
The enrolment was 784; seventy of
these were buttermakers enrolled in
the dairy division, and thirty-five were
women. In the domestic science de-
partment the great majority of the
students gave most of their time to
live stock and corn.
Soils, horticulture, botany and rural
engineering were given prominence in
the form of daily lectures. l was
deeply interested in the stock judging
and corn, to be taught how to properly
go over sheep, to distinguish the
strong and weak points and locate the
valuable cuts before it goes on the
block. Among the sheep worked on
was prize weather from,King Edwards
flock that was pronounced by John
Goslin in the meat demonstration to be
the model animal in the cattle exhibit.
Besides animals from the college herd
there were shorthorns from Flynn
Brothers, and Angus from the herd of
%. V. Battles. We were shown how
to go over these cattle and place them
according to their breed type. We not
only placed them, but had to state our
reasons why we had so placed them.
This year the hoeres represented
more breeds than ever before, and
there was every type of desirable west
ern animals. The college furnished
the draft mares from it's own stables,
Clydesdales and shirs and the Clydes-
dale stallion Kuroki. He was sup
ported by stations of the Percheron,
Belgian, German coach and Hackney
breeds from the barns of A. B. Holbert
of Greeley, Iowa.
In the hog department, three of the
prize winning Berkshire barrows at the
international had been returned for
short course work and furnished good
classes of typical fat hogs. Breeding
classes of Duroc Jersey sows, Poland
China sows, Chester White gifts, and
Berkshire sows were also worked on
and Yorkshires were used to emphasize
the bacon type.
We were also given some very
interesting lectures on veterinary
science; the most important, perhaps,
was the lecture on the Tuberculine
Test and demonstration of the test by
Professor ]. H. McLain. A COW from
the college herd had been tested and
reacted; she reacted very strong, LOG
to 107 if remember correctly. This
COW had been used as a nurse COW and
was very thin in flesh and could pass
for what is commonly called Gamer.
Although she reacted so strong she was
not badly infected, the only tubercu-
losis being found in the thorax and
probably had not been infected a very
long time. Prof. Mclean stated that
he had tested animals that had reacted
very light, in the pink of condition, fat
and slick, that were slaughtered and
found to be completely filled with
tuberculosis, proving that an animal
may be fat, look well, and still be bad
ly infected.
In his talks on tuberculosis, and in
fact in all of his lectures, Prof. Nc
Lain's main point was to impress upon
us to have our herds tested now, as
there is no doubt that after the next
session of the state legislature we will
be compelled to have them tested, and
the man that gets in line now is the
man that will suffer less. He cautioned
us to be sure to employ a competent
veterinary to do this work, one that
would see that animals were kept quiet
and normal, one who would administer
the test at the proper time and use the
toxine sent out by the state, andsto re-
turn all unused toxine at the time
stated as it is not reliable after
certain number of days.
Another thing of vital interest to the,
farmer was the subject of seed oats.
We were given one day on oats; we
were first given oats that were not
threshed; VIC examined the straw, its
length, how harsh, how brittle, it's
odor, number of joints, then the head,
number of branches, number of spike
lets and their color, the number of
grains in the spikelet, large and small.
We had four varieties to work on and
compare; this was very interesting and
the old boys were just as busy as the
young men. We were then given some
threshed oats, Silver Mine, that
weighed % lbs. to the bushel; each of
US took hand full, then counted out
100 kernels just as they came, then
sorted them into 8 piles, the large,
plump ones in one pile, the medium in
another, and the small in another.
The average for our class of nearly 300
was IL large kernels, 25 medium and |
81 small. Now if you people want to
know something about what your seed |
pats will do, if you will just count out
LOO grains in this manner, then take
cad pencil and roll out the meat or
germ in the large, plump grain, you
will of course find big meat or germ