Catching Grasshoppers to Feed to the Poultry

1907

Use a Hopperdozer

That grasshoppers are good food for poultry is recognized, but in most cases the poultry have to catch their own grasshoppers. We do not commonly hear of anyone taking the trouble to catch grasshoppers for the poultry. The Colorado station this summer tried the experiment successfully.

The fields were visited by innumerable multitudes of grasshoppers, and the station men determined to catch a few bushels of them for the fowls. A hopperdozer was used and run behind a mowing machine at the time the hay was being made. The hopperdozer was mounted on wheels, so that it would not catch in the hay. Usually kerosene is used in the hopperdozer, thus killing the insects as they fall into it. But this would make the insects unfit for food.

A little experimenting showed that water would hold the insects for some time or until they could be flipped out for the use of the fowls. A hopperdozer was used on a six-acre field of alfalfa and it succeeded in catching from nine to ten bushels of grasshoppers, estimated at 3,000 to the bushel.

Care of the Cows

1896

Have you ever watched your cows on a bitter cold day sneak slowly up to the water trough where you have broken the ice and stick her tongue in the cold water several times until she got used to it, then take a little sip and a little more until she could stand no more of it. Then she will walk slowly over the frozen ground until she gets in the shelter of an old wagon, and there with her back humped up she will stand for two or three hours shivering until what feed she has eaten has had time to warm that water up to a living temperature?

How long ought it to take a sensible man to find out where all of his feed is going, no matter whether it is a milk cow or a dry one. Nearly every pound she eats is needed to warm that water, and little is left to repair the body, much less to make milk or fat of. The simplest kind of a heating apparatus will cost not over ten cents a day to heat the water for a small herd twice a day. It will pay for itself twice over during the winter in food it will save and the milk it will allow the cows to make, and it will do the same in adding flesh to the other cattle, especially the young ones.

Then go a step further and buy some boards to build a shed that the poor things may have a dry place to stand and lie down under with a wind break against the cold piercing storms. These are not only acts of humanity, but they appeal directly to the pocketbook. They make the stacks of hay, the corn fodder and the meal bin go nearly twice as far, to say nothing of increasing the profits of the milch cows.

If a liberal allowance of straw, leaves or other trash is scattered under the shed the amount of manure saved will far more than repay the cost and trouble of collecting it, while it greatly adds to the comfort of the animals. If you are not too tired by this time, then get you a sharp butcher's saw and take the horns off dent from the boss cow and steers, and then the younger ones. This is the best time of year to do it, when there are no flies to bother. — Home and Farm.

Gowns of Supreme Court Judges

1920

When, soon after the Declaration of Independence, the United States Supreme court was formed, some of its members wanted to adopt the costume worn in America by judges of colonial days. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the draft of the Declaration of Independence, effectively squelched this suggestion. "For heaven's sake," he said, "discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum!"

Other suggestions — such as the garb of a Roman senator, flowing robes with a mortarboard cap, and so on — were also rejected, and it was eventually decided that the judges should wear short gowns of black silk. These they still wear.


Magpie Pet of Public

The magpie in Kensington gardens has many friends who attend his daily levee. One of so tender a heart that she conceals chicken bones in her muff for his delight was told that an offering of meal worms would prove irresistible.

She sought this delicacy, but only to learn that it is now unobtainable. For meal worms, as an article of bird fare, came from Germany.

Most of us will bear with equanimity the disappearance of this strangest of Hunnish trades. To the authorities of the zoological gardens, however, the problem of meal-worm production is said to be a weighty one still unsolved. — London Chronicle.

Horse Bites Tongue of Cow Thru Fence

1920

Farm Animals Get Into Dispute Over Bunch of Fodder

FREELING, Virginia, Feb. 26. — That the saying, "Truth is stranger than fiction," is true, was proved by an occurrence that took place near here. Henderson Mullins, a farmer of Cumberland Mountain, turned his horse out of the stable into a lot, giving him a bunch of stalk fodder, which was set against the fence that he might not trample it under foot. A cow from the opposite side of the fence began thrusting her tongue between the rails for the feed.

The horse viciously resented this intrusion by biting the tongue of the cow completely off.


School of Fish in Tender

Small Minnows Found Inside Rail Locomotive

OSAWATOMIE, Kansas, Feb. 26. — Water and fuel famines develop strange occurrences in railroading and occasionally require strenuous incidents to discover them. The which is by way of saying that J. E. Sturges, boilermaker foreman at the roundhouse here, discovered a school of small minnows in the tender of engine No. 125 the other day. The tender was brought into the shops for repairs after colliding with a coal car at Lane.

It is certain the fish had been in the tender for several weeks and that many of them had been dead for some time.