them exercise for it, good green feed, or, better still, sprouted oats, and feed beef scrap in a hopper all the time.  At first, while it is new, they may eat more than you would give them but don’t mind that they will regulate the quantity in a few days better than you can.  Get a good grade of beef scrap and keep it in a hopper that will not let rain in or keep it under cover and feed all the wheat and oats they require; if you are short on green feed give them a bale of alfalfa hay to work on.

A Dry Mash.

Will you give a formula for a dry mash?

Wheat bran, 500 pounds; middlings, 200 pounds; cracked corn, 200 pounds; charcoal, 20 pounds; alfalfa meal 200 pounds; bone meal, 150 pounds; blood-meal 100 pounds; meat cracklings, if ground, 200 pounds; ground oats or barley, 300 pounds.  Give oyster shell separately and supply fowls with good sharp grit.

Depluming Mites.

My chickens are losing the feathers from their necks, some three inches down the front and then extending around the neck.

The loss of feathers is probably due to the depluming mite.  Dust well with buhach through the feathered portion of the bird and apply carbolated vaseline to the bare skin and the edges of the feathers where the insects work.  Do this daily as long as needed.  When vaseline is not on hand, a mixture of coal oil and sweet oil applied with a soft sponge squeezed nearly dry does as well.  We would advise that you make a general cleaning and spraying of your poultry quarters, nest boxes, etc.

Part IX.  Pests and Diseases of Plants

Control of Grasshoppers.

This county is having trouble with the grasshoppers as are other counties.  Would you kindly inform me what I could do to exterminate them on my young orchard?

The best thing for grasshoppers is to fix up a lot of poison.  This is made in the proportion of 40 pounds of bran, 2 pounds of molasses and 5 of arsenic, mixed together as a mash.  They will take this wherever they find it, even when nice green leaves are close by, but it has to be kept moist.  Grasshoppers can also be reduced by driving a “hopper doser” over ground where they are.  This is made somewhat like a Fresno scraper, but is much longer and the bottom is covered with crude oil.  When disturbed the hoppers jump up and fall into the oil.  Besides the poison, you should also protect the trunk of the tree to prevent the hoppers from climbing up it.  This can be done by applying tree tanglefoot, or putting on one of the tree guards that prevent climbing insects from passing up to the leaves.  The combination of poison and tree guards will give you about all the protection you need.

Sunburn and Borers.

Please state the best remedy for keeping the borer out of young fruit trees.