Milford chronicle., 1959-03-06
Kent Soil Conservation
Dinner Meeting
March 10th
CONTINUED from page one)

continued from page one)
horses to tractors, to the mechani-
cal handling of feed crops, and to
mechanization in the dairy barn. =
said Professor James Burke, ex-
tension dairyman from Cornell
University. He was speaking to 95
farmers at the annual meeting of
the Kent County Dairy Herd I'M
provement Association at FELTON,
last week
This mechanization is good be-
cause it saves labor and permits
higher living standards, he con-
tinued. However, farmers are OBJ
liged to increase the size of their
herds in order to pay for the i'm
provements. This means, too, that
better records are needed to hold
down unit costs.
The latest development is me-
chanized dairy records, made pos
sible by the rev electronic compu-
ters. 1t takes only two seconds to
calculate herd data by machine
which would require several hours
if manually figured This repre-
sents a major break-through and
means that farmers should be able
to compete on more even terms
with industry and commerce.
Joseph Moore of Dover was
elected as president of the county
association by the directors. Louis
Wright of Willow Grove is the vice
president, and William Eliason con-
tinues as secretary. Three directors
were elected by the members:
Charles Blendt of Smyrna, Sam
.uel Dixon of Dover, and RoberI
Mason of Harrington.
Samuel Dixon, as association
president, introduced Ed ward
Schabinger of Newark who sum-
married the association report. The
members were told that the aver
age cow on test in the local asso-
citation produced 964O lbs. of milk
and 356 lbs. of butterfat in/1958.
This is over half as much again as
the average cow in the state. Good
records help a farmer to Gull out.
his profitable cows, adjust his
feeding program, and help in other
AA0AoEC CA4CAL III oCbACCO.
Delaware racked up the top corn
yields in the country and broke the
national record of 6S bushels by
averaging 20 bushels per acre last
year, according to Department of
Agriculture records, George Va
paa, county agent, says.
Only irrigated corn in Washing
ton and California produced a high
er average yield
He says there are plenty of good
reasons why Delaware farmers
racked up such a mark Those
farmers who didn't keep up with
their neighbors can find out why
by writing or calling the agents
office and getting a copy Of the
corn yield contest summaries and
corn variety test results.
The corn yield contest summary
lists the producers that grew more
than 100 bushels of corn and how
they did it. 1t lists the seed, fer
tilizer, cultural practices, planting
time, plant population per acre.,
previous crops and weed control
practices used by the high produ-
GERS.
The other summary sheet on va
riety tests gives yield results of
seed varieties tested on plots at
the Substation farm, Georgetown.
Delaware-produced certified hy-
brid seed performed as well or bet
ter than hybrids from out of state
in the test plots, Mr.. Vapaa said.
Certified seed is the best bet, be-
cause certitication guarantees va
riety purity, and seed free OF dis
ease and noxious weeds and high
termination
Roosters, being the gallant birds
they are, are often underfed, says
county agent George Vapaa. I'm
like husbands, when roosters find
a choice morsel of food they. call
over the hens and stand back while
the hens gobble up their fill.
You can see that much of this
will lead to lowered body weight
and less breeding efficiency.
Mr.. Vapaa says this situation
can be corrected by hanging spe-
cial rooster feeders on posts or on
the laying house wall at such a
height that only the male birds can
reach them. Placing feeders on the
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