Class 

Book 

Copyright^ 



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?i^fa ^« i tf>^ a T ^ ia ^tfa ^>^ ^ T tftftf 



200 Eggs a Yea r 

Per Hen ; 

How To Get Them. 





Price 50 Cents. 



PUBLISHED BY 

EDQAR L WARREN, Wolfeboro, N. H 
1900. 



t^^^s^rs^if 




EGGS FOR HATCHING. 



Will Condition Powder Affect the Fertility 
of Eggs for Hatching? 

On this point M. K. Boyer, of Farm-Poultry, says he has repeatedly 
experimented. He, too, like some others, at one time charged condition 
powders with producing infertile eggs, but the trials made with Sheridan's 
Condition Powder have fully convinced him that by its use the stock are 
strengthened aud made more vigorous, and such a condition is bound to not 
only produce strong fertile eggs, but hardy chicks. (Read test case below.) 

A. TEST CASE. 

FANNY FIELD, in Farm-Poultry, July, 1895, says:— 

Of course you want to know how the hatching of eggs from my hens, 
" encouraged " by Sheridan's Condition Powder, turned out, and how the 
chicks are coming on ; and I am as eager to tell as you are to hear. Up 
to date (July 1) I set one hundred and ninety- four eggs ; one hundred and 
fifty-three hatched, and there are yet twenty-five to hear from. Every chick 
came from the shell strong and well. We have lost twenty-three, but ouly 
one by sickness. Three were crushed, by the mother hens, two strayed off 
in the wet grass after a rain, and died from the effects of the chill, the hawks 
took five, and skunks gobbled an even dozen. 

[NOTE.— It looks as though the Sheridan's Condition Powder improved, rather than 
injured, the fertility of the eggs, judging from the above test case.] 



No Matter What Kind of Foods You Use! 

Sheridan's Condition Powder 

is needed with it to assure perfect assimilation of the food elements neces- 
sary to produce eggs. It is absolutely pure ; highly concentrated ; most 
economical, because such small doses ; in quantity costs less than one-tenth 
cent a day per hen. Use freely when hens are laying eggs for hatching. 
Sold by Druggists, Grocers and Feed Dealers, or sent by mail. Large cans most economical to buy. 
IF YOU CAN'T GET IT NEAR HOME SEND TO US. ASK FIBST. 

We send one package, 25c.; five, $1.00. A two-pound can, $1.20; Six, $5.00. Express paid. Sample 
copy " best Poultry paper " sent free. 

I. S. JOHNSON & CO., 22 Custom House St, Boston, Mass. 



REVISED EDITION. 



200 Eggs a Year Per Hen: 
How to Get Them. 



A Practical Treatise 



on 



Egg Making and Its Conditions 

and 

* 

Profits in Poultry. 



Price 50 Cents. 



PUBLISHED BY 

EDGAR Ia. WARREN Wolfeboro, H. H. 
1900. 



: 



47396 

Librur y of Cornircs* 

"•^o Copies Received 
SEP 141900 

Copyright antry 

SECOND COPY. 

D^'vertiH to 

ORDtfl DIVISION, 
SE P 24 1900 

80202 



COPYRIGHT 

1899, 1900, 
By EDGAR L. WARREN, 



THE TWO HUNDRED EGG HEN. 

We live in a competitive age. Business of all kinds is over- 
done. It is much harder to make a success to-day than it was 10 
years ago, and it will be much harder 10 years hence than it is 
now. The men who succeed are the men who place their 
products on the markets in the best shape at the least cost. 
Thousands are looking towards the poultry business for a living. 
Competition will soon be felt here as keenly as in other lines. 
The men who are to succeed in the poultry business are the men 
who can place their products on the market in the best shape at 
the least cost. Where everything is bought it costs 75 cents a 
year to feed a hen. It costs this whether she lays 100 or 200 eggs 
in the time. If the poultryman is to secure a good return on his 
investment it is evident that it is for his interest to keep the 200 
egg hen. It is as easy to get 200 eggs apiece from a flock of hens 
in a year as it is 100, if one only knows how, and it is the object 
of this book to tell how. If the reader will carefully follow my 
instructions I am prepared to assure him that he will greatly 
increase his egg yield and eventually reach the 200 egg mark. 

AN ESSENTIAL THING IN STARTING. 

I do not mean to say that the reader can take a flock of old 
hens of any breed or no breed and get 200 eggs a year apiece 
from them. There is no man living who can do that. The hens 
must be young and must come from an egg-producing strain. 
There is an old saying that blood tells. This is as true of poultry 
as of anything else. There are some breeds noted for egg pro- 
duction, and in all breeds there are strains that lay better than 
others. If the reader is not prepared to start in with a good-lay- 
ing strain he must not expect to get 200 eggs apiece from his 
birds. By carefully following the instructions of this book he 
can largely increase his egg yield, but he must not expect to get 
200 eggs apiece. I cannot impress it too strongly upon the 
reader's mind that if he expects to get 200 eggs apiece from his 
hens he must start in with a great-laying strain. 



WHAT BREED IS BEST? 

There is an old Latin proverb, De gustibus non est disputan- 
dum, which I will take the liberty to translate for the benefit of 
those who have been out of school for some time. Its meaning is 
this : In matters of taste there is no argument. This is as true 
in the poultry business as it is elsewhere. Other things being 
equal that breed is the best for a man which he likes best. There 
is no breed that combines all the excellences and has none of the 
defects. There is no breed that does not have its admirers. In 
general it may be said that the most profitable breeds are to be 
found in the Asiatic, American and Mediterranean classes, as fol- 
lows : In the Asiatic class the Light Brahmas, Buff and Partridge 
Cochins ; in the American class the Barred, Buff and White Ply- 
mouth Rocks, all the Wyandottes and the Rhode Island Reds ; in 
the Mediterranean class the Black Minorcas, Brown, White and 
Buff Leghorns. These are the great money-making varieties. 
The Asiatics are excellent table fowls and prolific layers of dark- 
brown eggs. They are good sitters and mothers, although some- 
what clumsy. They are inclined to be sluggish and readily take 
on fat. They stand cold well, and make good winter layers. 
The Mediterraneans are egg machines, turning out great quanti- 
ties of white-shelled eggs. They do not stand cold as well as the 
Asiatic and American breeds, and are not as good fowls for the 
table. The Americans on the whole are the favorites. They are 
all-round birds, good layers of brown eggs, excellent for the 
table, good sitters and mothers. They stand cold well, and are 
the birds for the farmers and breeders. The danger with every 
breed is that it will get into the hands of the fanciers and be bred 
for points rather than for utility. Stamina is the important 
thing, and not the show card. It will be a great day for the 
poultry business when farmers keep more pure-bred fowls, for 
then the great standard varieties may be kept up without danger 
of deterioration. 

HOW MANY VARIETIES SHALL I KEEP? 

After studying the matter carefully I have come to the con- 
clusion that it is better for the average poultryman to confine him- 
self to one variety. He will get better results and make more 
money if he concentrates his energies than he will if he dissipates 
them. 



There is no danger of contamination where only one variety 
is kept. Unless a man farms out his birds — keeping one kind 
here and another there — it is almost impossible to prevent mix- 
ture. Some ambitious rooster will scale the fence and get into 
the wrong yard, or some giddy pullet will arrange a tryst with a 
cockerel that has captured her fancy, of another breed. Where 
only one variety is kept there are times when the poultryman can 
give his stock "a run to grass," opening the gates and letting the 
birds range at will. A few weeks' freedom in the spring and fall 
greatly invigorates the flock. Where several varieties are kept 
such a vacation is impossible. 

Where a man keeps only one variety he has more birds to 
choose from, and consequently can steadily improve his flock. 
Suppose a man intends to keep 300 layers. To keep his stock 
good it will be necessary for him to get out 600 to 800 chickens 
each year. If he keeps only one variety, out of this large number 
he ought to be able to make up some very choice breeding pens ; 
but if he keeps half-a-dozen varieties the circle of choice is very 
much restricted. Consequently his stock will not show rapid 
improvement. 

How much better it looks to see just one kind on a place! 
The casual visitor is impressed, and even those who pass by have 
their attention attracted. Many a time have I heard favorable 
comments upon my White Wyandottes from persons driving by; 
and summer people who come here in large numbers are willing 
to pay me an extra price for eggs and chickens, just because my 
stock looks so nice. 

When I send away for stock or eggs I always send to a 
specialist. I have the feeling that a man who handles only one 
kind can do better for me than a man who handles a dozen or 
more. This feeling is shared by others. I know men who will 
not buy of a man who advertises more than one breed. 

Where a man desires to keep more than one variety I would 
suggest that he confine himself to one family or breed. In this 
way he will escape some of the difficulties that beset the path of 
the man who handles a number of varieties. The fowls being all 
of one family will have the same characteristics and respond to 
the same treatment. In case of an accidental mix-up the damage 
is reduced to a minimum, for the birds are all of the same size, 
comb and contour. 



HOW MANY EGG RECORDS ARE WRECKED. 

Some time ago I received a letter from a young woman who 
is an enthusiastic poultrywoman, in which she said that she was 
getting a goodly number of eggs, but that her record was lowered 
because she had kept over half a dozen hens which had laid well 
the year before. She said that she knew better, but could not 
resist the temptation. I mention this case because it is so typical. 
More egg records are wrecked by keeping old hens in the flock 
than in any other way ! There is always a temptation when a hen 
has laid well to keep her the second year. This temptation must 
be resisted if one is in quest of a big egg record. The fact that a 
hen has laid well for one year since coming to maturity inca- 
pacitates her from ever laying so well again. She has drained 
her system, and requires long recuperation before she can lay 
even moderately. You may set it down as an axiom that it is 
the pullets that give the big egg records. If you have in your 
flock some hens that you desire to keep a second year as a reward 
for past services, put them in a pen by themselves and do not 
look for large egg production from them. It is the pullets that 
lay, and the early-hatched pullets at that. Get out your chickens 
in March, April or May, according to the breed, if you want 
winter layers. 

Another way in which many egg records are wrecked is by 
harboring loafers in the flock. Not every early-hatched pullet is 
a layer. The loafers must be weeded out in some way or they 
will reduce your average. Suppose you have two hens in a pen, 
and one lays 200 eggs a year and the other none. The average 
for the two is 100 eggs apiece. The loafer has reduced her com- 
panion's egg record one-half. Many poultrymen are now using 
the Eureka nest box or some other similar contrivance and keep- 
ing individual records. 

TO PICK OUT THE LAYERS. 

Sometimes a person cannot afford to go to the expense of a 
patent nest box, or does not care to keep individual records, but 
would like to be assured that every pullet in the pen is a layer. 
There is a very simple and inexpensive way to do this. Partition 
off one corner of the pen into a little cage, and into this put the 
pullets one by one. Give the pullet the same food that is being 
given the rest, and keep a dish of water near her. Let her 
remain in the pen until you are satisfied that she does or does not 



lay. Sometimes three days are sufficient for a test, sometimes a 
week, and sometimes two weeks are needed. If a pullet is old 
enough to lay and does not lay in two weeks, or lays only two or 
three eggs in that time, she should be killed and eaten. Other- 
wise she will reduce your egg record. I repeat what I have just 
said, that one cannot afford to harbor loafers. Sometimes the 
handsomest pullets are the poorest layers. I had a pullet once, 
perfect in form and plumage, which failed to respond to the test 
and was killed. I did not find any trace of an egg in her. She 
was absolutely barren. It costs 75 cents a year to feed a hen, and 
this money is thrown away if the hen does not lay. Therefore 
test your pullets. If you do not care to go to the trouble of par- 
titioning off a place in the pen, an old dry goods box with slatted 
top will answer. But I would strongly recommend that this 
inside cage or pen form a feature of every compartment in your 
hen house. Its uses are many. I have already referred to its 
value as a place to test pullets. If you alternate cocks the one 
that is resting may be confined in this pen. Broody pullets may 
be kept there. It is an excellent place in which to set hens, and 
the chickens may be kept in the pen with their mothers until they 
are old enough to be put out of doors. 

THE THREE CONDITIONS OF EGG PRODUCTION. 

After the idle and sluggish birds have been weeded out and 
the pens made up, we are in a position to strike for a big egg 
record. In order for us to realize our ambition it will be neces- 
sary for us at the outset to understand the conditions of egg pro- 
duction. It was a maxim of Lord Bacon, one of the greatest men 
that ever lived, that Nature is the great teacher, and that in order 
to learn we must interrogate Nature. If we study Nature with 
open eyes she will often give us suggestions of great value and 
fruitfulness. The poultryman must continually go to Nature, 
the great teacher, and he will not go in vain. In the state of 
Nature in which wild fowls live, or in the state of semi-Nature 
in which the farmer's fowls are kept, what is the season of egg 
production? Summer. Why? Because in summer the condi- 
tions of egg production are present. What are these conditions? 
Warmth, proper food and exercise. Reproduce these conditions 
at any season of the year and the fowl must lay. The poultry- 
man should keep this fact in mind and govern himself by it. 



THE HEN HOUSE. 

It is not my purpose in this booklet to give plans for a hen 
house. The style of house a man builds will depend upon his 
means and his inclinations. Variety is one of the fundamental 
laws of the human mind. There are poultry houses costing 
thousands of dollars, and there are poultry houses that were built 
for less than a dollar a running foot. It is not always the most 
expensive house that gives the most eggs. But whether the 
house be cheap or dear it should have three characteristics. 

i. It must be dry. This is imperative. Dampness seems to 
be fatal to fowls. They will stand considerable cold without 
injury, but succumb speedily to dampness. Roup, rheumatism 
and kindred evils go with a damp house. If possible the house 
should be located where there is good natural drainage. The 
most important thing about the house is the floor. The best floor 
is made by carting in rocks to the depth of two feet, filling the 
interstices with gravel, and carpeting the whole with six inches 
of dry sand. In regions where rocks abound, as they do in New 
England, such a floor is not particularly expensive. Next to this 
ranks a board floor, covered with sand and gravel. Where the 
house is in a high and dry location an earth floor does very well, 
provided it is raised above the level of the ground. 

2. It should be warm. Nature has provided the hen with an 
ample covering of feathers, and she will not freeze even if the 
temperature of her house goes far below zero. But under such 
circumstances she will lay few eggs. How can she? All her 
food goes toward making caloric, and there is no surplus for 
anything else. Accordingly if you want eggs in winter you must 
see to it that your hens are kept warm. When I speak of the 
necessity of keeping the house warm I do not mean that it must 
be kept at 68 degrees, the proper temperature for a human dwell- 
ing. The temperature of a hen's body is 103 degrees, five more 
than the temperature of the human body. Then the hen is sup- 
plied with a thick coat of feathers. In a properly constructed 
house there is no need of artificial heat. A house should be so 
built that in the coldest weather water will not freeze solid in it. 
If it is as warm as this it is warm enough. If you are going to 
build a house in which you expect to get winter eggs, you must 
not build it too cheap. Tarred paper should be used under the 
shingles or clapboards and the house should be sheathed inside. 
Double windows should be put on in the coldest weather. To 
ventilate the house open the doors wide for a few minutes even 



9 

on the coldest day. If a lantern will burn in a house with a clear 
bright flame the ventilation is sufficient. 

3. It should be sunny. Fowls love the sun. See them stand 
in the path of sunlight in the morning of a clear bright winter 
day. The house should be situated where the sun will shine in 
it the most hours every day in winter. There should not be too 
many windows ; for the windows let the heat pass out as easily as 
they let it pass in, and the change in temperature between day 
and night is too great. 

THE TOILET OF THE HOUSE. 

In enumerating the conditions of egg production I might 
have mentioned a fourth, comfort. Hens will not lay unless they 
are fairly comfortable. How can a hen lay eggs in a cold, damp 
house with a swarm of parasites sucking her blood ? I said a few 
sections back that if you want an egg record you must harbor no 
loafers. The worst loafers you can harbor are swarms of lice 
that suck the life-blood of your hens and yield nothing in return. 
And yet it is comparatively easy to keep a flock clear of lice. I 
seldom find them. Why? Because I do away with the condi- 
tions that favor them. I keep my house clean. In order to keep 
your birds free of lice you must start right. Perhaps you have 
on your place an old ramshackle house in which hens have been 
kept for years. It is impossible to keep fowls free of lice in such 
a house. Why? Because the house is haunted. Lice lurk in 
every crack and crevice, and it is almost impossible to extermi- 
nate them. You may fumigate, you may burn sulphur ; but some 
will escape to hatch out their pestilential brood. The best way 
is to tear down the old house, burn the boards, and start in again. 
Build a new house of clean, sweet-smelling lumber, and make up 
your mind that it shall not be polluted with lice. 

Before putting your birds into your new house dust them 
thoroughly with some good insecticide. Sprinkle some of it in 
the nest boxes. Take an old can half full of kerosene, and with 
a paint brush go over the roosts. This should be done in sum- 
mer at least once a week. Provide the hens with a sand bath, 
remove the droppings every few days, keep the cobwebs swept 
down, sprinkle air-slacked lime about freely, and you will have 
little trouble with lice. 



10 

RIDDING A HOUSE OF VERMIN. 

Sometimes through carelessness or neglect a house becomes 
infested with vermin, and then radical measures are necessary. 
In the first place the house should be thoroughly fumigated. 
Close every door and window, and see that there are no cracks or 
apertures to admit air. Burn a pound of sulphur for every ioo 
square feet of floor space in the house : thus a house 10 x 10 will 
require one pound of sulphur, one 20 x 10 two pounds, one 30 x 
10 three pounds, and so on. The sulphur must be burned in iron 
vessels, which must be set on gravel or sand, so that there can be 
no danger from fire. Into each vessel put a handful of carpen- 
ter's shavings saturated with kerosene, and upon these sprinkle 
the sulphur. Place the vessels in position, apply a match to the 
shavings, and hastily leave the house, closing the door behind 
you. Do not open the house again for five hours, when every 
door and window should be thrown wide open. In case you feel 
any anxiety about fire, you can look in through a window once in 
a while to see that everything is going well. 

After the fumes of sulphur have been driven out, with a 
hand sprayer go through the house sending a spray of kerosene 
everywhere. These sprayers can be bought for a dollar each, 
will last for years, and are simply invaluable. All the time you 
have been at work the hens have been in the yard outside, without 
food, and are now anxious to return to their home. Let them in 
one by one, and as each enters catch her and dust her well with 
some good insecticide. Tobacco dust, which can be bought at 
the florist's for five cents a pound, is cheap and effective. 

You have now freed your house and birds from vermin for 
the time being, but have not destroyed the eggs, and in a week 
another swarm will hatch out. Accordingly it will be necessary 
to repeat the process once or twice before the pests are exter- 
minated. You can tire them in time ; but before you get 
through you will have learned the truth of the old saying, that 
an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. 

TO DUST A HEN. 

With your left hand grasp the hen by the legs, and lay her 
breast-down upon a newspaper. The powder should be in a tin 
box with a handle and a perforated cover. Sprinkle the powder 
into the feathers around the vent, rubbing it in well. Work the 
powder into the feathers about the neck. Work the powder 



11 

into the feathers on the sides and under the wings. Let the hen 
stand a moment, keeping your hands lightly around her so that 
she cannot get away. Return her to the roost and take another. 
After going through the pen shake the powder that has fallen on 
the newspaper back into the can or package. One application 
kills the lice that are on the hen at the time, but in a week there 
will be another brood. The best poultrymen recommend dusting 
a hen at least three times, at intervals a week apart, and never 
admitting a strange hen into the pen without first dusting her 
thoroughly. One lousy hen will contaminate all the rest, and 
so it is necessarv to be on one's guard all the time. 



FEEDING FOR EGGS: WHAT TO FEED. 

We now have our hens in a dry, warm, sunny and comfortable 
house, have supplied them with facilities for keeping clean, and of 
course want them to lay. What shall we feed and how much 
shall we feed them ? This is the most momentous question that 
confronts the poultryman. Unless a hen is supplied with mate- 
rials for egg production she cannot lay. She can no more pro- 
duce eggs without the proper food than a factory can turn out 
the finished product without raw materials. What shall we feed 
and how much shall we feed therefore? 

Let us again follow Lord Bacon's advice and interrogate 
Nature. Suppose we take a hen as she comes up to the house at 
the close of a long day in summer from foraging in the fields, kill 
her, take out her crop and analyze its contents. If we do so it is 
obvious that we shall obtain a least a part of the information we 
are after, for a hen lays in summer or not at all. 

What do we find as the result of our analysis? The crop 
we are dissecting has about as many articles in it as the average 
small boy's pocket, and they are equally miscellaneous. We 
find grains of corn that the hen has picked up about the barn, 
pieces of bread and table waste that she has found under the sink 
spout, clover leaves and tips of grass blades, bugs, worms and a 
mass of matter that we cannot resolve into the original elements. 
The first thing that impresses us as the result of our analysis is 
that the hen seeks variety. The second is, that this variety 
admits of classification. This mass of miscellaneous matter that 
we found in the hen's crop can be arranged in three divisions: I. 
Grain. 2. Green food and vegetables. 3. Animal food — in 
the form of bugs, worms and so forth. The conclusion is irre- 



12 

sistible, that these three elements must be combined if we would 
have a perfect ration. 

How shall we combine them? The answer is not so difficult 
as one would at first suppose. There are many ways. The hen 
makes a new combination every day. Perhaps the ideal way is to 
have no stereotyped method, but to study variety. If we combine 
grain, green food and meat in the daily ration, the hen can hardly 
fail to respond with a goodly output of eggs. 

There is no article of food that is so much abused as corn. 
Corn has its place, and an important place, in the bill-of-fare of 
fowls. But a hen cannot be properly nourished on corn alone. 
She needs a balanced ration. The men who get results in egg 
production are the men who pay great attention to feeding, and 
seek variety. 

FEEDING FOR EGGS: HOW MUCH. 

The problem, as every poultryman knows, is not what to feed, 
but how much. If you do not believe this write to the editor of 
your favorite poultry paper and ask him how much food you shall 
give a flock of 15 hens, and see what he will say. It takes a great 
deal of skill to steer between overfeeding on the one hand and 
underfeeding on the other. I believe however that there is a 
scientific principle underlying the matter, and think that after a 
great deal of study and experimentation I have discovered the 
principle. 

In order to determine how much we should feed we must 
again interrogate Nature. Before we began to dissect the crop 
of the hen we had killed, suppose we had put it in the scales to 
ascertain its weight. If the hen from which the crop was taken 
was of an American breed, if she had been running in the fields 
all day and just before she had been killed had been given all the 
corn that she would eat, her crop with its contents would weigh 
not far from six ounces. Allowing that two ounces of food have 
passed from the crop into the gizzard during the day, and from 
the gizzard into the intestines, it will be seen that when a hen is 
on the range, supplied with abundance of food, she will consume 
about eight ounces of food in the course of 24 hours. It would 
seem therefore that this is about the amount a hen needs to sup- 
ply all the demands of her system and leave a margin for egg 
production. But before we settle down to this conclusion there 
are some things to be taken into consideration. On the range the 



13 

hen has had plenty of exercise, and needs more food to supply 
the tissue lost than when in confinement. On the range 
food is more bulky and less nutritious than the food the hen 
receives in her pen. It contains a larger proportion of grass 
and vegetables. It is probable that in the pen, where the hen 
does not exercise so freely as she does on the range and where 
her food is more concentrated, she does not need so much food by 
one-fourth as she does when at liberty. Six ounces of food a day 
ought therefore to be ample to supply all the needs of a hen in 
confinement. 

Suppose we try a little experiment to verify this conclusion. 
Let us take a laying hen a year old and shut her up in a pen by 
herself, feeding her but once a day, but giving her all she will eat 
at this meal. The food we set before her is a mash containing 
all the elements for nutrition and egg production. We shall find 
that the hen will continue to thrive and lay eggs on six ounces of 
food a day. There will be a falling off in egg production, owing 
to the close confinement and change in methods of feeding, 
but the hen will live and lay on six ounces of food a 
day. We are now confirmed in our conviction, that in the Amer- 
ican breeds six ounces of food a day is about the normal amount 
for a hen in confinement. Whether she needs a little more or a 
little less must be determined by individual experimentation. 

Six ounces of food a day for a hen weighing six pounds seems 
at first thought an enormous quantity. In the same ratio a man 
weighing 160 would consume 10 pounds of food every 24 hours. 
But before we dismiss the matter as absurd let us consider a 
moment. The hen's food is not so concentrated as the man's. It 
contains far less nutriment in proportion to bulk. A consider- 
able proportion of it will be voided in the form of excrement. 
Then the hen has a task to perform such as is imposed upon few 
other creatures. She is expected to lay an egg weighing not less 
than two ounces; and an egg, as everyone knows, is one of the 
richest of food products. Deduct from the six ounces of food 
two ounces for waste and two ounces for egg production, and it 
will be seen that only two ounces are left to repair the tissues and 
maintain the temperature of the body. The laying hen needs a 
generous diet, and those doctrinaires who advocate keeping her in 
a state of semi-starvation have no support in reason for their 
theory. 



14 

FEEDING FOR EGGS: THE AUTHOR'S METHOD. 

Having given my readers the principles that apply to feeding, 
I propose now to tell them how I put these principles into prac- 
tice. I desire to state here that I have no patent methods. I aim 
to apply common sense to the problem of egg production, as I do 
to other things ; but I do not claim to have a monopoly of wisdom. 
There are doubtless other methods as good as mine. As I said 
in a preceding section, there are many possible combinations that 
will produce good results. I give you mine, and leave you to 
adopt it or not as you think best. 

I aim to hatch out my chickens early in the spring, so that 
they will get to laying before cold weather; and by the first of 
October begin to make up my laying pens for the winter. In 
each pen there are 1 8 or 20 pullets ; but the number will ultimately 
be reduced to 15, as the pullets are tested and the inferior ones 
thrown out. The pen when complete will contain one male and 
15 females. 

From October to April I feed as follows : A mash the first 
thing in the morning. This mash is made as I am about to 
describe. At the mill I buy corn and oats ground and mixed 
together. The basis of the mash is this mixture combined with 
bran, in the proportion of two scoopfuls of corn and oats to one 
of bran. About two-thirds of the mash is made up in this way. 
I next put in one-half ounce of green ground bone for each fowl. 
I am aware that this is a much larger proportion of green ground 
bone than is generally recommended, but it is no larger proportion 
of animal food than Nature furnishes when the fowls have free 
range. So great is my faith in green ground bone, that I have 
ventured to give expression to it as follows : 

To make hens lay 
Two eggs a day, 
Feed green ground bone 
In the mash at morn. 

It is perhaps needless to state that into the mash go the scraps 
from the table, which otherwise would be burned. I aim to intro- 
duce some green food every morning, and to give as large a 
variety as possible, believing that this is Nature's way. One day 
I feed clover, the next cabbage, the third onions, the fourth 
apples, the fifth potatoes, and so on. These vegetables are 
chopped fine or run through a root cutter, and fed raw. I feed 
clover once a week, or oftener when I can get no other green 



15 

food ; but confess that I am not so much in love with it as most 
writers on poultry topics seem to be. The fowls do not eat it 
with great avidity. That tells the story. The food that is eaten 
with the best relish is the food that gives the best results. The 
year that I made such a phenomenal record with my hens — 214 
eggs apiece from October to October — I fed no clover whatever ; 
but vegetables instead. Before the clover is fed in the mash it 
should be steeped for some time in hot water. 

The mash is salted about as I would salt it if it were intended 
for human consumption, and in the coldest weather I sprinkle in 
cayenne pepper. The mash is mixed with boiling water, and is 
allowed to remain on the stove until the whole mass is steamingf. 
I do not take it off until the fire underneath has warmed the kettle 
so that it begins to feel uncomfortable to the hand. I aim to 
have the boiling water thoroughly incorporated, so that there will 
be no dry streaks, and to have the mash in what might be called 
a granulated state — that is, crumbly but not sloppy. As I feed it, 
the mash is neither raw nor cooked ; but half way between. 

My feed troughs are pine boards four feet long and one foot 
wide, rimmed with laths to keep the mash from being scattered 
over the floor. I feed the mash warm, not scalding hot ; and feed 
what the hens will eat in 10 minutes. If anything is left on the 
boards at the end of 10 minutes it is scraped back into the kettle, 
and the boards stood up against the wall where they will be out 
of the way. 

One day in seven I give my hens a thanksgiving breakfast; 
that is, I give them all they will eat, not removing the surplus 
until the last hen has turned away. The philosophy of this 
thanksgiving breakfast lies in the fact that under my system of 
feeding, where I aim to keep the birds just a little hungry, 
there is danger that I will underfeed ; and this thanks- 
giving breakfast is designed to meet this danger. There 
are always one or two hens in a flock less aggressive than the rest, 
and these do not get their share and are underfed. But one 
morning in seven all can regale themselves to the utmost, and the 
timid hens and the hungry hens can be filled. 

At 11 o'clock in the forenoon I feed a grain ration — wheat, 
oats, or barley — consisting of one-half ounce to each head. In 
each house I keep an iron rake, and with this I rake the grain into 
the sand which forms a carpet to the floor. It takes but a 
moment, and in digging it out the hens get the best of exercise; 



16 

for for every kernel a hen finds she buries two. Mornings when 
I feed the thanksgiving breakfast I omit this lunch at 1 1 o'clock. 

The latter part of the afternoon I feed one ounce per head 
(strong) of cracked corn. Sometimes I vary by feeding an equal 
amount by weight of scalded oats. (The oats are weighed before 
scalding.) In the shortest days of winter I feed but twice, — the 
mash at sunrise and two ounces of corn to each hen (strong) in 
the middle of the afternoon. I do not believe in feeding whole 
corn to laying stock, as it is too easily found and quickly eaten. 

I do not wish to give the reader the impression that I weigh 
the grain every day, as .this might seem too laborious a method. 
After a little while the eye becomes accustomed to quantities and 
can judge with sufficient exactness. I do not weigh the grain or 
measure the mash but once a month ; and when I do, find I have 
judged quantities with surprising accuracy. 

From April to October I feed differently. The weather is 
such that the hens are able to be out in their yards, where they 
can pick up at least a part of their living. I have my garden and 
lawn to look after, as well as my professional duties to attend to ; 
and try to arrange so that the care of my hens will be as little bur- 
den as possible. I feed no green food, as they can get plenty of 
that in their runs, and less green ground bone than in winter. I 
feed the mash at night, and give them all they will eat. I reduce 
the grain ration, throwing in a few handfuls of corn or oats 
morning and noon. If I were a farmer, and my hens had free 
range, I would feed nothing but cracked corn in the summer, and 
not much of that, — perhaps half an ounce per head to my hens as 
they came up to the barn at night. 

Summer and winter I keep plenty of pure water before my 
hens, and this water is given them in clean vessels filled at least 
twice a day. In the winter I give warm water instead of cold. 
A laying hen is a thirsty creature and should be well supplied 
with drink. 

FEEDING FOR EGGS: ANOTHER EXCELLENT METHOD. 

There is a lady in Auburn, Maine, formerly a school teacher, 
who for some years has been devoting her spare time to poultry, 
with great success. No one in the city where she lives seems able 
to get the same number of eggs from a given number of fowls 
that she can. This lady, Miss Maria Stevens, has very kindly 
given me her method of feeding, and it gives me great pleasure 
to present it here. It will be seen that Miss Stevens makes a 



17 

liberal use of green ground bone and meat meal, as all must do 
who are in quest of a big egg record. 

"In the morning," she writes, "I feed a mash made of about 
two parts bran to one part ground oats. For every 50 hens I 
put in two quarts, good measure, of green ground bone ; also some 
vegetable well cooked and mashed. This latter I vary as much 
as possible, using water in which vegetables have been cooked 
to moisten the mash, providing it is not so strongly flavored as 
to be disagreeable to the hens, as sometimes happens if turnips 
have been cooked in it. The proportion of vegetable matter given 
to hens in winter is much smaller than that given in summer, and 
also smaller than the other ingredients in the mash. In summer 
cut grass or clover and vegetable tops are substituted for the 
roots given in winter and are fed separately whenever convenient. 
Dried beef scraps are substituted in summer for the ground bone 
in winter and are fed in smaller quantities, perhaps half the 
amount. I season with salt rather less than I would for my 
family. I never use pepper, but occasionally ginger. When 
using pepper and seasoning highly with salt, I have always had 
more or less hens die of dropsy in spring. My mash is always 
thoroughly scalded and frequently well cooked, as in winter I 
often mix it the night before and let it remain in the oven over 
night. Animal meal I consider a cheap food which will make 
hens lay ; but I cannot use it, even in much smaller quantities than 
the rule. 

"My hens always have warm water in clean drinking vessels 
in winter and cool water in summer. 

"The second and last feed comes after dinner, when I hoe or 
rake into the litter on hen house floor two parts whole oats to one 
part wheat. The litter is six or eight inches deep, and the feed 
is given generously enough to make them feel rewarded for 
scratching up to the next afternoon. 

"Oyster shells I prefer to throw in fresh every day, especially 
in the latter part of the winter, when they get too busy laying 
to eat the proper amount of lime. 

"A neighbor adopted my way of feeding, but with pullets 
bought of me failed to get like results. I attribute the failure to 
the fact that he was afraid of wasting feed, and if he could possi- 
bly find a grain would not feed more. In the morning I feed all 
the hens will eat with a relish." 



18 

THE GOLDEN RULE FOR FEEDING. 

I can do no better than to close this section by giving what I 
believe to be the golden rule for feeding. Select a representative 
hen and put her in a pen by herself, keeping her there at least a 
week, feeding her but once a day, either morning or night as may 
be most convenient. Weigh out to her all the mash she will eat, 
and keep careful record of the results. The average amount she 
consumes per day by weight will be the minimum you should feed 
each member of the Hock for best results in egg production. 

A NEST BOX FOR INDIVIDUAL RECORDS. 

Within the past few years the poultry business has been 
almost revolutionized by the introduction of a nest box for indi- 
vidual records. It is a fact well known to all breeders of animals, 
that desirable traits may be transmitted, and by careful matings a 
strain may be permanently established. I suppose that all the 
horses in the world come from a common ancestor. And yet 
how great the differentiation to-day ! Natural selection, supple- 
mented by human selection, has produced the trotter, the pacer, 
the hackney, the saddle horse, the huge Percheron and the dimin- 
utive Shetland pony. Among cows some breeds are noted for 
the production of butter, others for milk, and others for beef. 
Among hens there are some breeds that excel as egg producers, 
and in all breeds there are strains that lay better than others. It 
is obvious that if we are to build up a great egg-producing strain 
we must breed from great layers. 

How may these great layers be picked out? There are two 
ways. One is by the testing pen ; the other, by the trap nest box. 
The former makes the pen the unit; the latter, the individual 
bird. The former is the way I myself proceed. My laying pens 
are made up of birds that have been carefully tested in solitary 
confinement, as described in a preceding section. If every bird 
in the pen is a layer, and the average of the pen in egg production 
is satisfactory, I do not hesitate to breed from that pen. This is 
a great labor-saving method. The birds do not require the con- 
stant attention that is demanded where individual records are 
kept. Each bird is tested at the beginning of the season, and 
marked with a leg-band if she meets the test. Otherwise she is 
put in the pen for culls or dispatched. 

Some poultrymen desire to make the individual bird the unit, 
and not the pen; and for their purpose a nest box is necessary. 



19 

There are many of these boxes on the market. The right to use 
these boxes, with plans for their construction, costs from one to 
three dollars. Through the courtesy of Mr. G. M. Gowell, agri- 
culturist of the Maine Experiment Station, I am able to present 
my readers with the plan for a nest box free of charge. The nest 
box here described was made by Mr. Gowell after a careful study 
of the various nest boxes on the market, and is intended to com- 
bine their excellences and avoid their defects. This is the box 
that is illustrated here, and the description of it is in Mr. Gowell's 
own words. : 




SINGLE NEST BOX. 



20 



"The nest box is very simple, inexpensive, easy to attend, 
and certain in its action. It is a box-like structure, without end 
or cover; and is twenty-eight inches long, thirteen inches wide 
and thirteen inches deep — inside measurements. A division 
board with a circular opening seven and one-half inches in diame- 
ter is placed across the box twelve inches from the back end and 
fifteen inches from the front end. The back section is the nest 
proper. Instead of a close door at the entrance, a light frame of 
inch by inch and a half stuff is covered with wire netting of one 
inch mesh. The door is ten and one-half inches wide and ten 
inches high and does not fill the entire entrance, a space of two 
and a half inches being left at the bottom and one and a half 
inches at the top, with a good margin at each side to avoid fric- 
tion. If it filled the entire space it would be clumsy in its action. 
It is hinged at the top and opens up into the box. The hinges are 
placed on the front of the door rather than at the center or back, 
the better to secure complete closing action. 

"The trip consists of one piece of stiff wire about three-six- 
teenths of an inch in diameter and eighteen and one-half inches 

long, bent as shown in drawing. A 
piece of board six inches wide and just 
long enough to reach across the box 
inside is nailed flatwise in front of the 
partition and one inch below the top of 
the box, a space of one-fourth of an inch 
being left between the edge of the board 
and the partition. The purpose of this 
board is only to support the trip wire in 
place. The six-inch section of the trip 
wire is placed across the board and 
the long part of the wire slipped 
through the quarter inch slot, and 
passed down close to and in front of the, 
center of the seven and a half inch cir- 
cular opening. Small wire staples are 
driven nearly down over the six-inch 
section of the trip wire into the board 
so as to hold it in place and yet let it roll sidewise easily. 

"When the door is set, the half inch section of the wire 
marked A comes under a hard wood peg or a tack with a large 
round head, which is driven into the lower edge of the door 



|KA/ 



JT 



i** 



'tv 



/ 




* 



21 



frame. The hen passes in through the circular opening and in 
doing so presses the wire to one side, and the trip slips from its 
connection with the door. The door promptly swings down and 
fastens itself in place by its lower edge striking the light end of 
a wooden latch or lever, pressing it down and slipping over it; 
the lever immediately coming back into place and locking the 
door. The latch is five inches long, one inch wide and a half 
inch thick, and is fastened loosely one inch from its center to the 
side of the box, so that the outer end is just inside the door when 
it is closed. The latch acts quickly enough to catch the door 
before it rebounds. It was feared that the noise arising from 
the closing of the door might startle the hens, so instead of 
wooden stops pieces of old rubber belting were nailed at the out- 
side entrances for the door to strike against. 

"The double box with nest in the rear end is necessary, as 
when a bird has laid and desires to leave the nest, she steps to the 
front and remains there until released. With one section only, 
she would be very likely to crush her egg by standing upon it." 




fcpg^ff, r^^zj^gj 




NEST BOXES IN POSITION. 



22 

KEEP THE HENS AT WORK. 

The hen at liberty is a great forager, on the move from morn- 
ing until night. She needs a chance to exercise when in confine- 
ment, or she will take on fat and become useless as an egg pro- 
ducer. Connected with each house there should be a yard of 
generous size. The yard should be at least 10 times the size of 
the house: thus a house 10 x 10 will take a yard 10 x ioo; one 
20 x 10 a yard 20 x 100 ; and one 30 x 10 a yard 30 x 100. These 
yards are the best places in the world for fruit trees. It is surpris- 
ing how fast trees will grow and how heavily they will bear when 
enriched by the droppings of fowls. There are two orchards in 
this town, standing side by side on the same soil, the trees of which 
were bought of the same agent on the same day. One of these 
orchards is used as a hen yard ; the other is not. The trees in the 
orchard that is used as a hen yard have made double the growth 
and bear four times the fruit of the trees in the other. These two 
orchards are a good object lesson right here at home of the value 
of planting fruit trees in poultry runs. The trees furnish shade 
for the hens in the hot days of summer, which is an important 
consideration. 

In winter when the hens are in their house they should be 
made to work. The floor should be covered to the depth of six 
inches or a foot with litter, and grain should be thrown into it 
and the hens made to dig it out. The litter should be shaken up 
with a fork once a week, and renewed once a month. If the floor 
of your house is carpeted with dry sand you do not need to pro- 
vide a litter except in the very coldest weather. Rake the grain 
into the sand with an iron-toothed rake, and make the hens 
scratch for it. 

GRIT AND OYSTER SHELLS. 

Nature has not provided fowls with teeth, and consequently 
they cannot masticate their food as can the higher animals. The 
food passes from the crop into the gizzard, where it is prepared 
for the stomach by trituration ; that is, as the food passes through 
the gizzard it is triturated, or ground up, by the little flinty parti- 
cles which line that member. Unless the fowl is well supplied 
with grit the food passes into the stomach improperly prepared, 
and the result is indigestion. It is a great mistake not to keep 
the fowls well supplied with grit. Oyster shells are necessary to 
supply the lime needed for the egg shells, and should be supplied 
in abundance. 



23 



DON'T CROWD YOUR BIRDS. 

There is a snare spread for beginners in the poultry business 
which catches nearly all : it is to crowd the birds. The prospec- 
tive poultryman has kept a small flock and they have laid well. 
He begins to reason like this : "I have kept 12 hens in this pen 
the past year and they have netted me two dollars apiece. All I 
have to do to increase my income is to increase the number of my 
birds. If 12 hens have paid me $24, 50 hens will pay me $100." 
This seems logical, and the prospective poultryman goes to work 
and puts in 50 birds, only to find at the end of the year that the 
50 birds have not paid him so well as the 12 did. They have laid 
no more eggs, and sickness has been rife among them. More 
men lose money and retire from the poultry business in disgust 
from losses brought about by putting too many birds into one pen 
than from any other cause. 

The farmer would not think of putting two cows in one stall. 
He would not plant his potatoes in rows one foot apart. He 
would not shut up his family in one room. Why should he not 
display the same good sense in dealing with his fowls? Experi- 
ence has shown that 10 square feet of floor space is about the 
amount needed by each hen if she is to do her best. Where the 
house is kept perfectly clean, and where the hens have a chance 
to get out doors every pleasant day, they can get along with a 
somewhat smaller space. But for the best results in egg produc- 
tion there must be plenty of room. The year I made the phenom- 
enal record with my White Wyandottes — 214 eggs apiece from 
October to October — I knocked out the partitions between two 
pens and gave the flock double room. 

BEST SIZE FOR A FLOCK. 

The size of a flock will depend something upon circum- 
stances. Experience has shown that a large number of birds 
kept together do not do so well as a smaller number. Twenty- 
four females and one male are as many as should ever be put in 
one pen, and even then there should be 10 square feet of floor 
space to each bird. The ideal number to a pen, I think, is one 
male and fifteen females. Where this number is kept it makes it 
easy to feed the grain in the proportion I have elsewhere recom- 
mended, — one ounce to each bird making just one pound to the 
flock. It takes moral courage to cut down the size of the pens, 
but the man who does it will have his reward. 



24 

SICKNESS IN THE FLOCK. 

Where fowls are treated as I have recommended there will be 
comparatively little sickness. It seldom pays to doctor sick 
fowls. They should be killed, and burned or buried. In case 
you desire to doctor a sick fowl quarantine her so that she cannot 
communicate her disease to the rest. "The Farm Poultry 
Doctor," by N. W. Sanborn, M.D., is the best brief treatise on 
diseases of fowls that I know anything about. 

INTRODUCE NEW BLOOD. 

In order to keep up the quality of the flock new blood must 
be introduced from time to time. I am aware that much less is 
said in these days against inbreeding than was the case a few 
years ago, and that inbreeding is systematically practiced by 
many poultrymen with apparently no harmful results. But I do 
not believe in it. It is against Nature, and must eventually 
result in deterioration. Why is it that many breeds once famous 
have lost their popularity? It is because the stamina has been 
bred out of them. Hawthorne, who was a keen observer, as well 
as one of the greatest masters of English prose that ever lived, 
in "The House of Seven Gables" has a paragraph showing the 
deterioration that came to a famous breed of fowls from too close 
inbreeding. "Nor must we forget to mention a hen-coop of very 
reverend antiquity," he says, "that stood in the further corner of 
the garden, not a great way from the fountain. It now contained 
only Chanticleer, his two wives, and a solitary chicken. x\ll of 
them were pure specimens of a breed which had been transmitted 
down as an heirloom in the Pyncheon family, and were said, 
while in their prime, to have attained almost the size of turkeys, 
and, on the score of delicate flesh, to be fit for a prince's table. 
Be that as it might, the hens were scarcely larger 
than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect, and a 
gouty kind of movement, and a sleepy and melancholy tone 
throughout all the variations of their clucking and cackling. It 
was evident that the race had degenerated, like many a noble race 
besides, in consequence of too strict a watchfulness to keep 
it pure." 



25 

BUYING STOCK AND EGGS. 

New blood can most conveniently be introduced through the 
male, and males may be procured in two ways : through purchase 
outright, through eggs bought of reputable dealers. The former 
method is the more satisfactory, the latter the less expensive. In 
purchasing a full-grown bird the buyer takes no risks. He may 
ascertain in advance just what he is to buy. Any dealer will 
send description of his birds, and some will send photograph or 
blue print. If the bird is not as represented he may be returned. 
The element of uncertainty is practically eliminated. In buying 
eggs it is different. The most careful and conscientious breeder 
cannot guarantee that any given per cent, of the eggs he sends 
out will produce chickens. There is no way of determining, even 
by the Roentgen ray, whether there is a germ of life in an egg or 
not until it has been incubated a few days. After the eggs leave 
the breeder's hands they may be chilled, if in winter, and roughly 
handled at any season of the year. The customer may have bad 
luck. He may not know how to run an incubator; the hen may 
leave her nest or may break some of the eggs under her feet. 
The business of selling eggs for hatching, which on the surface 
seems so profitable, is really very unsatisfactory, and many 
breeders have abandoned it altogether. 

If three eggs out of a sitting incubate, and the buyer gets 
three strong, sturdy chicks, he has no cause for complaint; but, 
on the contrary, has made a good bargain. Suppose he pays two 
dollars for the sitting, and in the fall has a trio, — a male and two 
females. The man who sold him the eggs would charge him ten 
dollars for birds equally good. One must not expect eggs 
shipped in the dead of winter, subjected to all the exigencies of 
travel, to hatch equally well with eggs procured about home 
in June. 

INCUBATOR OR HEN, WHICH? 

Sooner or later the poultryman must face the question with 
which this paragraph is headed, and it is my purpose now to help 
him to an answer. In this matter, as in most others, there is 
something to be said on both sides. In favor of the natural 
method there is first of all economy. It costs at least $25 to 
secure the outfit for artificial incubation, and this is an expense 
that many can ill afford. Chickens brooded by hens have more 
stamina and are subject to fewer diseases than chickens brooded 



26 

in any other way. There is no mother for a brood of young 
chickens that can equal an old hen. Some of the most progres- 
sive poultrymen in the country use hens exclusively, setting hun- 
dreds of them at a time. 

The disadvantages of the natural method is that it is never 
completely under one's control. Whatever mental qualities a hen 
may or may not possess she has a full-grown, large-sized will ; 
and no method has yet been discovered to make a hen sit when 
she does not want to. To realize the largest profits in poultry, 
chickens must be hatched early and kept growing from the day 
they leave the shell. It is not always possible to have a supply 
of sitting hens on hand. The sitting hen is liable to leave her 
nest before her task is done, and no amount of persuasion will 
induce her to return. Sometimes she crushes eggs or young 
chicks under her clumsy feet. At the best she can bring out but 
a few chickens at a time. After a while the up-to-date poultry- 
man is almost certain to come to the conclusion that he must 
have an incubator. 

The advantage of the artificial method is that it is so com- 
pletely under one's control. The incubator may be started at any 
time. The best machines are so adjusted that the element of 
chance is practically eliminated, and every fertile egg may be 
incubated. The trouble comes in rearing the chickens. Brooder 
chickens require much more attention and are more subject to 
diseases than chickens brooded under hens. The per cent of 
loss is greater. Especially among beginners there is sometimes a 
"slaughter of the innocents" that is frightful. 

To sum up: If one wants early chickens and wants them in 
quantities and has the time to give to them, he should by all 
means get an incubator. Otherwise he would best stick to 
the hen. 

GET A GOOD INCUBATOR OR NONE. 

In purchasing an incubator remember that the best is the 
cheapest. A poor machine is dear at any price. Beware of the 
home-made incubator. Sometimes they work satisfactorily, but 
oftener they do not. I know a young man of more than ordinary 
ingenuity who constructed an incubator from plans that he found 
in a paper. By visiting the machine at intervals during the 
day and by getting up two or three times a night to trim the lamp 
or to pull out plugs so that the surplus heat might escape, he was 



27 



able to keep the temperature somewhere near where it ought to 
be. But one warm Sunday, while he was at church, the temper- 
ature took a leap upward, and when he returned at noon the 
thermometer registered 120 degrees. As a consequence 180 
chickens were prematurely roasted, and nearly three weeks of 
valuable time lost. The young man has lost confidence in incu- 
bators and now hatches his chickens with hens. An incubator 
should be bought at least a month before it is to be started on 
eggs, in order that the operator may become thoroughly familiar 
with the machine and know how to run it right. 

A NATURAL HEN INCUBATOR. 

Under the hap-hazard method of keeping fowls, which too 
often prevails, hens are set in any place and in any way that may 
seem the most convenient. Sometimes they are set in the cellar, 
sometimes in the barn chamber, and sometimes in the hen house, 
in the midst of the laying stock. Old boxes, baskets and even 
pails are used as nests. It is no wonder that under such condi- 
tions hens break eggs and leave their nests, and that the owner's 
patience becomes completely exhausted long before the hatching 
season is over. 

The work of caring for sitting hens may be reduced to a min- 
imum by the construction of what I may call a natural hen incu- 
bator, the design for which is shown here. 



i^^i .•n ,^r~^r 






A NATURAL HEN INCUBATOR. 



28 

This natural hen incubator may be of any length ; but should 
be two feet deep, two feet high, and divided into compartments 
18 inches wide. Some prefer a door to each compartment, but 
I find it more convenient to have the doors somewhat longer, so 
that one may enclose a number of divisions. The top should be 
hinged at the back, so that it can be lifted up if desired, as 
shown in the cut; but ordinarily it is shut down. The door in 
front is covered with chicken wire. Each compartment should 
be in two divisions, so if a hen wishes to leave her nest tempora- 
rily she can do so. 

If possible, enough hens should be set at one time to utilize 
all the compartments behind a door. The door should be kept 
latched except in the morning when it is opened, the hens taken 
off, fed and watered and left to dust. In from 10 to 20 minutes, 
according to the weather, the hens should be driven back. As 
the hens are all set at the same time it makes no difference which 
compartment a hen enters. She will find eggs ready for her. 

Under this arrangement the hens cannot interfere with each 
other. Eggs are not broken by hens jumping down upon them, 
as the hens all walk into the compartments from a level. One 
hundred sitting hens can be looked after with comparatively 
little trouble. 

Where a number of hens is set at the same time one or two 
should be kept in reserve, in case some of the hens "break up." 

The comfort of a sitting hen should be scrupulously looked 
after. Before she is placed on the nest she should be thoroughly 
dusted with some good insect powder and again just before she 
brings off her brood. She should be taken off the nest, fed and 
watered and given a chance to dust herself every day. Sitting 
hens should be fed on whole corn, as that is slowly digested and 
is a heat-forming; food. 



TO SET A HEN. 

Where incubation is carried on by the natural method it is 
important to have a supply of sitting hens on hand in March, 
April and May, in order that the chickens may be hatched early. 
While it is true that no method has yet been discovered to make 
a hen sit at will, it is also true that the instinct may be encour- 
aged. As soon as we understand the philosophy of incubation 
we may go to work to bring about the desired result. In a state 
of Nature when does the hen sit? In summer. Whv in sum- 



29 

mer? Because the reproductive instinct has been stimulated by 
the hot weather. Because she has laid her litter out. Because 
she has become fat and sluggish. It is evident therefore that if 
we can reproduce these conditions we can hasten the time of incu- 
bation. 

Old hens make the best sitters, because they are not so active 
as young ones. The treatment of hens that are kept for sitters 
should be radically different from the treatment of hens that are 
kept for layers. They should be confined more closely and fed 
differently. Corn should form an important part of their food. 
As soon as a hen shows symptoms of broodiness she should be 
encouraged. She should be taken at night and placed in a nest 
prepared for her in a dark, quiet place. This nest should contain 
china eggs, and should be covered with a burlap bag to make it 
dark. After 36 hours the bag may be removed and the hen let 
out for food and water. If she goes back it is safe to entrust her 
with real eggs. 

TO BREAK UP A SITTING HEN. 

To break up a sitting hen take a soft cord four feet six inches 
long, attach one end to the hen's leg and the other to a staple 
driven into the sill of the house. Leave the hen in the pen with 
the rest, but where she cannot get on a nest, feed lightly, and keep 
water within reach. Usually a few days of this treatment is 
effectual ; but if the hen requires more heroic measures put her in 
the pen with a vigorous male, who will soon break her up. 

THE BEST MATING FOR VIGOR. 

In another section of this book I have insisted strongly that 
we must look to pullets for large egg production. The produc- 
tion of eggs however is not all there is to the poultryman's trade. 
He must raise young stock in order to supply the market with 
poultry and to replenish his supply of layers. It is a well-known 
fact that eggs from year-old hens are larger and produce more 
vigorous chicks than eggs from pullets. The best mating for 
vigor is undoubtedly a cockerel to year-old hens, and next to this 
a cock to mature, well-grown pullets. I would advise the 
poultryman to keep over enough year-old hens to make up his 
breeding pens. Those that are kept over, being the pick from a 
large number, will be his choicest birds, and by breeding from 
them his stock will steadily improve. Pullets for layers; but 
year-old hens for breeders and mothers! 



30 

THE LAW OF SEX: MALES OR FEMALES AT WILL. 

One of the most interesting problems that confronts the 
biologist is that of sex. What are the conditions that produce 
a male organism and what the conditions that. produce a female? 
It is obvious that in a world where everything is by law sex is 
not by chance, but what the law is has never until now been dis- 
covered. Upwards of 500 hypotheses have been advanced ; but 
each hypothesis, when tested by all the facts, has proved inade- 
quate. In a matter where there is so much uncertainty and 
where so many eminent names are connected with theories that 
have long since been abandoned, it becomes one to speak with 
modesty. But it has happened more than once that a great 
discovery has been made by some obscure man or woman who 
seemingly has stumbled almost by accident upon something the 
rest of the world has overlooked. I realize what a stupendous 
claim I make, but I believe I have thought out the great law that 
underlies sex, and am able to give that law for the first time to 
the world. I believe the law will be more carefully studied than 
I have been able to study it, and better formulated ; but I believe 
the law as I enunciate it will be accepted in all its essential par- 
ticulars. 

Before I enunciate the law I desire to call attention to a fact 
with which all are more or less familiar : that is, the presence of 
two sex principles in Nature. These principles are the 
masculine and the feminine. Not only are these principles pres- 
ent in animal life, but they are also present in plant life, — the 
two great divisions of sex occurring here. Among flowering 
plants there are staminates and pistillates, or flowers with male 
or female organs ; and among flowerless plants there are the two 
corresponding sex divisions. The importance of this fact to 
agriculture has never been sufficiently grasped. As I write the 
trees are laden with a wealth of pink and white blossoms, and 
everybody is predicting an enormous apple crop. But such will 
not be the case, — at least in this section. Why? Because there 
are so few bees to fertilize the flowers. Last summer was so 
dry that little honey was stored, and consequently many colonies 
died in the winter. As I go about among my trees my ears are 
not saluted by the hum of little wings and my eyes gladdened by 
the sight of busy little bodies. There will be a good crop of the 
self-fertilizing varieties, such as the Baldwin and Greening; but 
the varieties that require cross fertilization will almost be a 
failure. 



31 

There is another fact in this matter of sex, which is generally 
overlooked, but the significance of which is enormous. Not only 
are there two sex principles in Nature, but these two sex princi- 
ples are present in the same individual ! One of these principles 
is stronger than the other, and gives the name to the sex, but both 
are there. In every man there is a certain feminine element, and 
in every woman a certain masculine element. It may be that in a 
higher type that is to be produced at some future time both of 
these elements will be blended in exact proportion, and the two 
principles will no longer be localized but combined. Such a 
consummation seems hinted at in Luke 20:35, 36, — "But they 
which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the 
resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in mar- 
riage ; neither can they die any more : for they are equal unto the 
angels ; and are children of God." The mistake that has been 
made in the past has been in identifying sex with certain out- 
ward organs ; whereas these organs are not the source but the 
manifestation of sex. In the last analysis sex is not physiological 
but moral. 

What are the elements that we denominate as masculine, and 
what are the elements that we denominate as feminine? The 
masculine elements are strength, courage, enterprise, excitability, 
and (may I add?) ferocity. The feminine elements are docility, 
timidity, domesticity and maternal love. To put it another way, 
the masculine is the active principle, the feminine the passive ; the 
masculine is the aggressive principle, the feminine the domestic. 

We are in a position now to advance to a statement of the law. 
If the sex of an individual is the resultant of the preponderance 
of the masculine or feminine element in the composition, it fol- 
lows with the inevitability of an axiom that whichever of these 
elements preponderates at the time of the formation of sex will 
determine its character. The Mississippi is comparatively clear 
until the Missouri pours into it, and then the water becomes a 
tawny tide. The strong current from the alluvial plains of the 
Central West gives color to the whole mighty river from the 
point of juncture to the Gulf. So the sex element that is the 
strongest colors and controls the whole. The law of sex is : The 
sex of the offspring is in accordance zvith the dominant sexual 
principle at conception and immediately afterwards. 

Will this law stand the test of an appeal to facts? It will. 
The sex of the offspring is in accordance with the dominant 
sexual principle at conception and immediately afterwards. 



32 

What is the masculine principle, as I have defined it? The 
active and aggressive as distinguished from the passive and 
domestic. When should you expect the masculine principle to 
predominate? In time of war and tumult. If the law of sex is 
correct, as I have outlined it, it should follow that at such times 
there should be an excess of males born. Such is always the 
case. If the law of sex is correct, as I have given it, among 
what class should you expect to find the greatest number of 
males? Among the poor. Why? Because the struggle of life 
is fiercer among the poor than among the rich, and this calls out 
the aggressive qualities. It is a well known fact that among 
the poor male children predominate, while among the comforta- 
ble and well to do the reverse is the rule. If the law of sex, as I 
have given it, is correct, in what times should we expect the 
greatest number of female children to be born? In times of 
peace and prosperity. Why? Because life is easier at such 
times, and the masculine qualities are not so much at the fore. 

The law being as it is it follows that to secure a preponder- 
ance of offspring of either sex we must secure the conditions that 
favor the production of that sex. I am writing now of the 
poultry business. The same principles that apply to poultry 
breeding will apply to the domestic animals and even to man him- 
self. But I must confine myself to the task in hand. We want 
a preponderance of females. The law being as it is, what are 
the conditions that will produce the greatest number of females 
and the smallest number of males? 

i. Affinity. I mean by this that the male and females 
should be adapted to each other. Those who have observed 
fowls closely have noticed that a cock will have his favorites, and 
that the females will often welcome one male more than another. 
Where there is perfect affinity the birds are happy and contented, 
and the conditions are right for the production of females. 
Where the birds are not well mated and frequent quarrels ensue, 
the aggressive qualities are uppermost and the offspring likely to 
be largely males. It follows that two roosters should never be 
kept in one flock, if an excess of females is desired, as they will 
quarrel with each other. Nor can the practice of alternating 
roosters be recommended, as in this case fertility is secured at 
the expense of sex. 

2. . Freedom from disturbance and fear. Fowls are 
extremely conservative, — creatures of habit to an amusing extent. 
If a hen laid in a certain nest yesterday she means to lay in the 



33 

same nest to-day, even if it is occupied and the one by its side is 
empty. If a hen roosted in a certain place last night she is deter- 
mined to roost in the same place to-night, whether you want her 
to or not. Where hens are kept stirred up by the presence of 
strangers or shifted frequently from pen to pen, the feminine 
qualities are disturbed and the masculine qualities are aroused. 
The quieter you can keep your hens the more pullets you will 
hatch. You should be careful how you admit visitors to your 
pens during the breeding season. 

3. Abundant nutrition. There is nothing that will make 
animals so cross and restless as hunger. On the other hand the 
most savage animals become less ferocious after a hearty meal. 
Regular and abundant nutrition promotes calm and contentment. 
The sexual perfection of many insects depends upon the nutri- 
ment supplied to the larvae. It has been found that if caterpillars 
are starved before entering the chrysalis state the resultant but- 
terflies or moths are males, while others of the same brood highly 
nourished are females. Don't be afraid to feed laying hens gen- 
erously. If you let them sit when they want to do so they will 
consume their surplus fat, and after their needed rest will be in 
condition to go to laying again. 

4. Comfort. As I pointed out in the case of human beings 
more females than males are born in times of peace and pros- 
perity. The reason is life is less strenuous and the active, aggres- 
sive qualities are less called upon. The same principle applies 
in the case of the lower animals. A dry, warm, clean, sunny 
house has its effect upon sex. Fowls kept in such a house should 
produce a preponderance of pullets. In the dead of winter we. 
should expect more males than females to be hatched, but as the 
season advances the excess should be the other way. 

5. Time of impregnation. Among human beings it has been 
found that the nearer conception comes to the close of the 
menstrual period the more likely the child is to be a girl. The 
fresher the ovum when fertilized the greater the chances that the 
offspring will be a female. Reasoning from analogy it follows 
that eggs laid at the beginning of a litter are more likely to 
produce pullets than eggs laid later. It is no great advantage 
therefore to have the hens in our breeding pens begin to lay early 
in the fall. In American breeds the shells are darkest at the 
beginning of a litter, and the darker the shell therefore the 
greater the probability that the chick hatched will be a pullet. 



34 

6. The greater the number of females to a male the more 
pullets. The hens are more ready for the attentions of the male 
and welcome his approaches instead of resisting them. Put as 
many females with a male as he can fertilize, and the majority of 
chickens hatched will he pullets. 

FERTILE EGGS AND HOW TO GET THEM. 

All around me my neighbors are complaining of poor hatches. 
One man tells of putting 200 eggs into an incubator, and bringing 
out only four chicks. Some sittings have been entirely infertile. 
Two or three chicks to a sitting has been about the average. The 
fertility is better now, as the season is later, but it is still low. 
\\ ith me the fertility has never been more satisfactory. In some 
sittings every egg has incubated. My neighbors look upon me 
with wonder, and think I must be in possession of some strange 
secret. Not at all. I simply have applied a little thought to the 
problem and have found it easy of solution. 

Reproduction draws upon the vital forces as no other act does. 
The tree that is laden with fruit this year so that its boughs have 
t<> be propped up to sustain the weight of golden apples, will not 
bear again so luxuriantly for several seasons. Reproduction is 
possible only when the vitality is highest, and when the individ- 
ual is neither too young nor too old. 

In order to get fertile eggs three things are absolutely neces- 
sary : maturity, vitality, comfort. The conditions in the breeding 
pen must be such as to promote an excess of vitality. Where the 
male is immature, where the house is so cold that all the food eaten 
goes to maintain the caloric, where the fowls are alive with ver- 
min or rotten with disease, the fertility will be low. Inbreeding 
also tends to infertility. So does lack of exercise and overfat 
condition of fowls in the breeding pen. 

Doubtless diet has an important effect upon fertility. Unless 
every element needed for the embryo is present, the egg will be 
infertile or the chick will die in the shell. There are some kinds 
of food that stimulate the genital organs and promote sexual 
activity. Raw onions chopped fine and fed in the mash twice a 
week are excellent during the breeding season. Clover is also a 
valuable food for fertilitv. 



35 



TO KEEP CHICKS FROM DYING IN THE SHELL. 

Chicks die in the shell from two causes. The first is weak 
germs. The number of deaths from this cause may be reduced 
to a minimum by increasing- the vitality of the fowls and so of the 
germs. The other cause is lack of moisture. Millions of chicks 
die every year that might have been saved with a little care. 

it is a fact well known to all physiologists that a human being 
will suffer more and die quicker from thirst than from hunger. 
There are well authenticated cases where a man has gone with- 
out food for several weeks, but no case is recorded where a man 
has gone that length of time without water. The embryo in the 
shell needs a large supply of water, and Nature has arranged 
to meet this need by putting 78 per cent of water into the egg. 

Under the hen. as in the incubator, evaporation goes steadily 
forward. Moisture percolates through the shell, and unless the 
loss is made good the embryo is deprived of water and becomes 
less vigorous if it does not die. 

Nature takes care that when incubation goes on in accordance 
with her laws the eggs shall be liberally supplied with moisture. 
The hen in her wild state makes her nest upon the ground 
where the eggs come in contact with the moist earth. Every 
day or two the hen leaves her eggs and goes out in search of 
food, coming back with her feathers wet with dew. When a hen 
steals her nest the same thing happens. The hen comes off every 
now and then, burrows in the damp earth, races through the wet 
grass and comes back to her eggs as wet as if she had been in 
the river. After a while she brings out a dozen lively chicks, 
and her owner wonders how she does so when the hen he sets 
brings out only two or three. 

Where a sitting hen does not have a chance to get out 
doors, her owner should supply moisture to make good the loss 
to the eggs by evaporation. Eggs should be sprinkled on the 
7th and on the 14th da}'. Remove the hen from the nest and 
with a whisk broom sprinkle the eggs thoroughly with water of 
a temperature of 95 degrees. On the 19th day the eggs should 
be given a bath. Fill a pail with water of the temperature of 95 
degrees, and after it has become still drop the eggs in it one by 
one, letting them remain from one to three minutes. If there is 
a lively chick in the egg in a minute or two it will begin to bob 
up and down as a float does on the water when a fish is nibbling 
at the bait below. Take the egg out and put it back in the nest, 



36 

wiping it with a towel if it is winter but letting the surplus water 
remain if it is summer. In case an egg does not show any move- 
ment after being in the water three minutes — if it does not 
"jump"— von might as well throw it away, as it will not incubate. 
Chicks from eggs treated in this way come out strong and clean 
and make a surprising growth. 

REARING THE CHICKS. 

In order to get the 200-egg hen we must start with the chicks. 
They must come of good stock. Men do not gather grapes of 
thorns or figs of thistles. The eggs for hatching should be of 
medium size, symmetrical in shape, and free from excrescences. 
They should be handled as little as possible after being gathered 
and during incubation. It is a good plan to test the eggs on the 
seventh day and remove the infertile ones. These will be per- 
fectly clear. If hens are used for hatching it is a good plan to 
lift them up carefully from time to time to see that no eggs are 
broken under them. The larger varieties are greater offenders 
in this respect than the smaller ones, as they are more clumsy. 
In case eggs are broken they should at once be removed, and the 
soiled eggs in the nest washed in blood-warm water and wiped 
dry with a soft cloth ; for if this is not done the pores in the shells 
will become clogged and the chicks inside die of suffocation. 

I suppose there is no subject on which poultrymen differ so 
much as on the proper feeding and care of chicks. Some pre- 
scribe a bill-of-fare as elaborate as that of a first-class hotel, while 
others recommend a more moderate menu. I know a man who 
raises chicks with good success who feeds nothing but dry Indian 
meal. I know another who feeds nothing but cracked corn. 
Another who feeds whole wheat. The fact is, I suspect, there is 
a wide range of diet suitable for healthy chicks, and no hard and 
fast rule can be laid down. 

REARING THE CHICKS: CRACKED CORN METHOD. 

The first method I recommend is what I call the cracked corn 
method. It is for those whose time is limited, who wish to raise 
healthy chicks with as little trouble as possible. It consists in 
keeping fine cracked corn before the chicks all the time, and let- 
ting them help themselves whenever they feel like it. Some of 
the finest chicks I have ever seen have been raised in this way. 
To the success of this method it is absolutely essential that cool, 



;*7 

fresh water be kept before the chicks all the time, and that they 
have free range out-of-doors. This is the method for farmers 
who have little time to bother with chicks, but who wish to raise 
enough to replenish their flock. Chicks brought up in this way 
are seldom troubled with sickness, and make rapid growth. 

REARING THE CHICKS: AUTHOR'S METHOD. 

My own method of rearing chicks is somewhat peculiar. I 
do not know that I would recommend it to all. T do 
not know that T would practice it myself under different cir- 
cumstances. But it works well, and is very simple. I seldom 
lose a chick, and my chicks make rapid growth and are strong 
and vigorous. 

I live in a region where rocks abound, and where gravel may 
be had for little more than the cost of hauling. My brooder 
house is in a wet place, and to make it perfectly dry I filled in 
below. the sills with two feet of rocks, and then filled the chinks 
between the rocks with coarse gravel. I then put on as a top 
layer six inches of fine gravel. The floor of the brooder house 
now is always dry, and there is a fine chance for chicks to scratch 
and burrow. 

I do not disturb the hen or chickens for 24 hours after the 
hatch. Then I lift the hen off the nest, put the chickens in a 
basket, take the hen under my left arm, and convey the hen and 
chicks to the brooder house where I set them down and feed 
them. For the first meal I give a mash made of two parts Indian 
meal and one of bran, mixed up with boiling water, and brought 
to a granulated (not sloppy) state. Into the mash I put a pinch 
of salt and a sprinkling of black pepper. After the chicks have 
eaten what they want 1 scrape back what is left into the dish, 
sprinkle plenty of fine cracked corn on. the floor and go away. I 
do not look in upon the chicks until the next morning, when I 
give them another meal of mash and see that they have plenty of 
fine cracked corn to last them until I come again. I ought to add 
that I am careful to keep cool fresh water in the brooder house 
all the time. My fountain is a lard pail inverted in a shallow tin 
dish. Near the rim of the pail I bore half a dozen little holes with 
an awl, through which the water constantly percolates. 

Under my system I feed a mash once a day. After the first 
week I aim to introduce a little variety. Sometimes I chop up a 
few onions to stir into the mash, sometimes I put in clover meal, 
and sometimes a little cooked meat chopped fine. I aim to keep 



38 

plenty of fine cracked corn on the floor of the brooder house all 
the time, so that the chicks can help themselves whenever they 
feel like it. 

I keep the brooder house filled with chicks and hens, keeping 
chicks of the same age in the same pen. By watching the hens 
a little I soon discover which ones get along together, and remove 
the timid or troublesome ones at night. It may be that when I 
start J will have half a dozen hens and 60 chickens in one com- 
partment, and will gradually remove the hens until only two or 
three are left. I am not particular that each chick shall find its 
own mother. -It will find some mother, and that is enough. 

I keep the chicks in this brooder house until the weather is 
warm and dry. Then 1 let them out upon the ground. In the 
house they are safe from hawks, rats, cats and other predatory 
creatures, and make rapid growth. I keep the house scrupu- 
lously clean. The top of the gravel is removed every few days. 
I use my sprayer freely, and throw in air-slacked lime. My 
method may be called the "lazy man's method," but it works like 
a charm and takes but little time. 



REARING THE CHICKS: FARM POULTRY METHOD. 

The third method I call the Farm Poultry method, as it is 
recommended by that paper. "For the first 24 hours after hatch- 
ing chicks do not need food, as the portion of yolk that has 
just been taken into the abdomen has not been fully digested; and 
then too the chick should get accustomed to the fact that he has 
'just been horned' before his little crop is started on its seldom 
empty journey through life. When the hatch comes oft" let the 
little fellows have a drink of pure fresh water (not too cold); 
this invigorates them and helps clear the digestive organs of the 
waste from digested yolk. 

"The first food should be bread crumbs and hard boiled egg, 
or johnnycake. To each pint of food half an even teaspoonful 
of Sheridan's Condition Powder should be added, and also a 
sprinkling of chicken grit. The food for the first few weeks 
should be johnnycake, rolled oats, coarse oatmeal, and bread or 
cracker crumbs. A little well cooked meat finely minced three 
times a w r eek, and a liberal supply of fresh green food, grit, char- 
coal, and pure water, are essential to health. Twice a week they 
should get the Condition Powder with their food, preferably 
mixed with the johnnycake or bread crumbs, and moistened with 



39 

milk. This will insure a good digestion, and a good digestion is 
a safeguard against disease. 

"When the chicks get to be six weeks old they should have a 
cooked mash for supper six nights in the week, and Sheridan's 
Powder should he given in this mash twice a week in the propor- 
tion of a heaping teaspoonful to each quart of dry meal in the 
mash. As the chicks grow the amount may be slowly increased, 
until the proportion is two teaspoonfuls to each quart of dry 
ground grain. For other food they should have hulled oats, 
wheat and a little cracked corn — fresh green food always. 

"From the first have a litter of chaff or cut clover and sand 
for thechicks to scratch in ; exercise is essential to good digestion. 
Give them sunny quarters, and provide a shelter in case the sun 
is too hot, and for protection in stormy weather. When warm 
weather comes be sure that they can have plenty of freedom and 
exercise on the green bosom of '( )ld Mother Earth.' Keep them 
busy, happy and hungry. Be careful not to overfeed. If you 
must coop them up, make the coops large enough to give them 
plenty of room to exercise and grow. Change the location of 
such coops often, to give them fresh ground to run on." 

WHEN TO HATCH THE CHICKS. 

Chicks of the .Asiatic breeds should be hatched in March, 
chicks of the American breeds in April, and chicks of the Med- 
iterranean breeds in Maw 

TO START PULLETS TO LAYING IN THE FALL. 

Sometimes pullets are slow about starting in to lay in the fall. 
They were hatched out early, and are big enough to lay ; but week 
after week goes by and no eggs reward their owner's patient care. 
I do not believe it is best to hurry Nature, and to develop pre- 
cocity at the expense of size and vigor ; but sometimes Nature 
may be assisted to advantage. 

It is a well-known physiological fact that a change is often 
beneficial to the health. The benefit from a summer vacation 
does not come from the rest one takes. — for often one is more 
active than one would be at home, — but from the change of air 
and scene and from the new impressions that come to the mind. 
I have sometimes stimulated Qg^; production in a flock of hens by 
shifting them from one pen to another or by making some slight 
change in their bill of fare. 



40 

Where pullets are old enough to lay and do not lay they need 
some slight shock or change to start them in. The majority of 
those who rear chickens give them free range, or as near free 
range as possihle, during the summer months. This is correct. 
But after they get their growth their energies need to be directed 
to egg production and not run off in useless exercise. Accord- 
ingly as early as October ist — if not before — the pullets should 
be taken from the range and put into the laying houses. Here 
their range should be restricted. More meat meal or ground 
bone may be advantageously introduced into their ration, and a 
stimulant may be given in the shape of cayenne pepper or Sheri- 
dan's Condition Powder. This treatment soon induces egg pro- 
duction, if they are of the "bred-to-lay" kind. 

HOW AND WHERE TO MARKET THE PRODUCT. 

Producing the eggs and rearing the chicks form but a part, 
and perhaps the smallest part, of the poultryman's business. In 
order to make money he must market the product to the best 
advantage. It is here, I am convinced, that the majority of 
poultrymen fail. They are not good business men. They work 
hard enough, but do not calculate closely and do not sell at the 
right time or at the right place. In these days when competi- 
tion is so close and the margin for profit so narrow, the differ- 
ence between profit and loss in the poultry business may consist 
in the manner in which the product is put on the market. 

The man who keeps but a few hens and does not make poultry 
raising his principal occupation, will probably do better to sell his 
eggs and poultry to his regular grocer than to hunt up private 
customers. It is true that he may receive a cent or two a dozen 
more if he sells at houses, but this is more than offset by the loss 
in time. The grocer is not so particular about his eggs, so long 
as they are fresh, as is the private customer, and will take eggs of 
all sizes and colors. It is true he does not wish to pay in cash, 
but the profit on his goods is about the only profit he makes on 
the transaction ; for the grocer is often compelled to sell eggs for 
just what he gave for them. The grocers are the great buyers 
of eggs throughout the land. 

The man who keeps hens on a larger scale, and who wants to 
make the most out of the business with the least trouble, will do 
well to make an arrangement with a city grocer to ship him a 
certain number of cases each week throughout the year. The 
poultryman should go to the city and see the grocer personally- 



41 

The chances are lie will get an order. This is far more profita- 
ble than selling to the local grocer. In the town where I live I 
have never known eggs to go above 30 cents a dozen, and they 
remain at this figure but a short time ; while in the cities to the 
south of us they sometimes sell as high as 45 or 50 cents. 

The poultryman who produces a gilt-edged product can often 
market to private customers to advantage. The hotels will take 
a limited number of fancy fresh eggs. They do not take so many 
as one would think, because in cooking they use cold storage eggs. 
Clubs are good customers, and will pay a fancy price for a fancy 
article. Druggists use a large number of brown eggs in con- 
nection with their soda trade, and will often pay a good price 
for fresh eggs of good color. There are private families that will 
gladly pay the poultryman the same price they have to pay for 
eggs at the store, and pay in cash. The advantage of having pri- 
vate customers is, that one can sell them beside eggs, poultry, 
vegetables, cream, berries and other products of the farm and 
garden. 

How may these private customers be obtained? I know of 
no better way than by advertising. A card in the local paper or 
a few hundred postals sent through the mails will be sure to bring 
results. I believe in postal card advertising, and give an idea 
for a card to send out. 

I FANCY FRESH EGGS 

DELIVERED AT YOUR DOOR. I 

# YVhv go to the store and take your chances on 

% eggs which may or may not be fresh when you can ^ 

% have strictly fresh eggs delivered at your door twice % 

• <$> 
$ a week? Every egg dated and guaranteed. A ♦ 

^ postal card will bring me. ^ 

I EDGAR L. WARREN, I 

f Pleasant View, J> 

• <f 

* • WOLFEBORO, N. H. X 
•f #' 

4<^s><sxsx$><$»<ex$><$x$>^ 



42 

The town where I live is a noted summer resort, hundreds of 
people coming here every season. The shore of the lake is dotted 
with camps and cottages. So far as I know there is not a farmer 
in town who advertises. A card like this sent to campers would 
he heard from : 



To Campers. I 

I 

( )ne of the delights of going into the country is 1| 

to have strictly fresh eggs, vegetahles and cream. ^ 

1 make it a point to supply campers with fancy fresh l> 

eggs, broilers and roasters, cream, berries, fruits J> 

and early vegetables. I deliver every morning. A X 

postal will bring me. |> 
EDGAR L. WARREN, 

Pleasant View, ^ 
Wolfeboro, N. H. 



The poultryman who keeps from 300 to 500 head of laying 
stock will have a good deal of poultry to dispose of, especially if 
he follows my advice in this booklet to keep pullets, principally, 
for layers. It will be quite a problem to dispose of this stock to 
the best advantage. In passing I would remark that the poultry- 
man should keep his own table well supplied. Plump and juicy 
broilers and roasters are just as good for him as they are for any 
one else. There is no reason why the poultryman's table should 
not rejoice once a week with broilers or roasters. If the poul- 
tryman uses an incubator he can begin to reduce his stock in the 
spring. There is no better time to kill a hen than when she wants 
to sit, for then she is sure to be plump and in good condition. 
During the summer there is in most towns a good market for 
poultry. The poultryman should steadily cull from his flock, 
and about moulting time have a grand "round up," selling the 
fowls for what they will bring, — except those that he wishes to 



43 

keep over for breeders. Quite a number of cockerels may be dis- 
posed of to the farmers at a dollar apiece, if a postal card like this 
is sent them : 

Choice Cockerels Cheap. 

I have a number of choice White Wyandotte 
f cockerels, which I will sell for one dollar each if ± 
i taken at once. If bought out of town cockerels like jj 
% these would cost from three to five dollars. Intro- 
duce new blood and grade up your flock by pur- 
J chasing a cockerel of my heavy-laying strain. First f 

4 conu first served. <§> 

I EDGAR L. WARREN, 

$ Pleasant View, <r 

<£ WolfeborOj N. H. ; 

s 

Before taking- leave of the subject I trust the reader will par- 
don me if I give a few words of advice. Re strictly honest. The 
poultry business offers opportunities for deception. Beware how 
you yield to them. Let it be your ambition to be known as "the 
honest poultryman." Date and guarantee every egg you sell. 
Be neat in your person, and have your goods fresh and attractive. 
Be pleasant and accommodating. Make all the friends you can 
without sacrifice of principle, for it is with his friends that a man 
does business and not with his enemies. 

KILLING AND DRESSING FOWLS FOR MARKET. 

( )ne of the most disagreeable tasks the poultryman has to per- 
form is to kill and dress his fowls. It seems heartless after 
making a bird a pet and gaining its confidence to take its life. 
Still it has to be done. The Creator of the universe, in putting 
man at the head of the animal kingdom, gave him dominion over 
fish, fowl, cattle and all creeping things. Man has no right to 
torture or maltreat any living thing; but he does have the right, 
under certain circumstances, to take life. It is probable that the 
animal escapes what to man is the most distressing feature of the 
whole situation, the dread of death. It enjoys every moment of 



44 

its existence, and the agony of dissolution is brief. It is far more 
humane for the poultryman to kill his own fowls, even though 
they have been his pets, than to consign them to the tender mer- 
cies of the commission merchant ; for in the former case the fowls 
are not packed in close and stuffy coops, jolted over stone pave- 
ments in express wagons, left to suffer for food and drink. As 
fowls must he killed it is well to know how to kill them humanely 
and expeditiously, and the following instructions should be com- 
mitted to memory. 

t. Take the bird from the roost at night, 36 hours before it is 
to be killed, and shut it up in comfortable quarters. The next 
morning give it a good breakfast, but nothing more to eat after 
this until it is killed. Let it have all the water it will drink. The 
water will add greatly to the fowl's comfort and assist in evacuat- 
ing the bowels. The confinement is for the purpose of having the 
fowl at hand when it is wanted and of emptying the crop. 

2. Suspend the fowl by the feet at a convenient height with a 
soft cord, the upper end of which is secured to a hook or nail in 
the ceiling or beam overhead. 

3. Lock the wings together behind the back, to prevent flap- 
ping. Do this carefully, so that they will not be dislocated. 

4. Take the tip of the wings in the left hand, and with the 
right strike the fowl a smart blow on the head with a stick or 
cudgel. Strike hard enough to produce concussion of the brain 
and unconsciousness. 

5. Grasp the fowl by the comb or by the feathers at the back 
of the head with the left hand, and with the right insert the blade 
of a sharp knife in the neck just back of the ear lobe, on the under 
side of the neck bone and parallel with it. Run the blade clear 
through the neck. When you withdraw the blade twist it to 
right angles with the neck bone, severing the artery in the throat, 
and causing the blood to flow profusely. 

6. Begin to pluck immediately. Pluck up the breast and 
sides to tail. Remove tail feathers. Unlock the wings, and strip 
them of long feathers. Remove feathers from around vent. 
Pluck the feathers from back. Finish plucking. If done quickly 
the feathers will come out easily and the skin will not be torn. 
The bird should be entirely denuded of feathers in 10 minutes. 
In case rents are made sew them up neatly with white thread. 

7. If the fowl is to be drawn, with a sharp knife cut a slit 
about an inch long back of the vent and parallel with it, through 
which insert index finger, hooking it into the intestines. 



45 

Remove intestines. The lower end of the intestines and the egg 
sac may be removed by enlarging the slit in the shape of a half 
circle, until it joins the ends of the vent. This will make a round 
hole about the size of a silver half dollar. After removing the 
intestines cut off the fowl's head, then draw back the skin and 
take off about an inch of the neck bone, pull the skin forward 
and tie. 

8. "For the Boston and Xew England markets the poultry 
should be picked perfectly clean. For the New York markets the 
tip feathers of the wings are left on. Do not singe the bodies for 
the purpose of removing any down or hair, as the heat from the 
flame will give them an oily and unsightly appearance." 

9. "Plumping is recommended by some dealers, and consists 
in dipping the carcass as soon as thoroughly picked for 10 seconds 
in water nearly or quite boiling hot, and then immediately into 
ice-cold water. This makes the meat look plump and fat, con- 
siderably improving its appearance." 

10. "The laws of Massachusetts and New York do not 
require poultry to be drawn. In the former State however the 
crop must be drawn if there is food in it at the time of killine 
Custom, which is quite as potent as statute law, requires that 
poultry marketed in Massachusetts be drawn; and carefully 
drawn poultry will sell so much more readily and for so much 
better prices, that it pays well to comply with this demand." 



PACKING AND SHIPPING. 

"Carefully sew up all rents or torn places on the skin, wash 
clean in cool water, wipe dry and hang in a cool place until the 
animal heat is entirely out, before packing. Pack in clean barrels 
or boxes with clean straw, as follows: first a thin layer of 
straw and then a layer of poultry in the same posture in which 
they roost, then a layer of straw and another of poultry, and so on 
until the barrel or box is quite full, finishing with a layer of 
straw which should be tucked firmly into any crevices in the sides. 
Nail the corners or heads on securely, and mark carefully with 
the name and address of the dealer to whom you ship, not forget- 
ting your name and address as shipper ; and notify the dealer by 
postal or letter that you have shipped him one or more boxes or 
barrels of dressed poultry by freight or express, as the case may 
be. Always take a receipt from the freight or express agent, and 
ship so as to reach the market not later than Friday. Any com- 



46 

mission merchant will send quotations on application ; but the 
price you obtain will depend upon the condition of the birds upon 
arrival and the quality, common fowls never selling' so well as 
pure-bred or grades." 

TO SCALD A FOWL. 

Where the fowl is to be eaten at home, or where it is sold for 
immediate consumption, many prefer to remove the feathers by 
scalding. There is a right and a wrong way to do this. The 
right way is as follows: Kill in the manner described in the pre- 
ceding section. Begin to pluck as soon as the blood starts, and 
continue until it stops Mowing. Have at hand a pail of hot water, 
— just below the boiling point,- — and into this dip the fowl, taking 
it out as soon a- possible. Let the water drip from the feathers, 
and then dip the fowl again. The feathers will come off easily, 
and the fowl will keep several days without discoloration. To 
sum up: Dry pick as long as the blood Hows, and then get tl\e 
fowl in and out of the zvater as quickly as possible. 

TO KEEP EGGS A YEAR. 

When Li Hung Chang, the Chinese envoy, was in this country 
a few years ago. he brought along among other delicacies eggs 
packed in clay, which were said to be as fresh when the mould 
was broken as if laid the day before. It is probable that the 
Chinese, tin ise curious people, could teach us many things about 
poultry culture which it would be profitable to learn. Certainly 
the)' have a method of preserving eggs as simple as it is effi- 
cacious. 

To keep eggs a year, or a longer time, two things are neces- 
sary: i. To exclude all germs of life from within. 2. To 
exclude all germs of life from without. One of these is as 
important as the other. The germ of life within the egg is intro- 
duced at copulation. It is a fact not generally known that eggs 
from flocks in which there is no male keep much longer than 
eggs from (locks in which one or more males are kept. There is 
a popular superstition that hens lay better if a cock is allowed to 
run with them. Such is not the case. The presence or absence 
of a cock in a flock of laying hens has no influence one way or 
the other upon egg production. After the breeding season is 
over males should be killed, or shut up in a pen by themselves. 
The practice that many farmers have of allowing half a dozen 



males to run with their hens is one that cannot be defended from 
an economic or aesthetic standpoint. 

To exclude germs from without, eggs must in some way be 
protected from the air. Any solution that closes the pores of the 
shell and protects the egg from the air is good. Even such a 
simple method as wrapping an egg in paper will postpone decay. 
The two absolutely sure methods of keeping eggs a year are: 

1. To coat them with vaseline and keep them in lime water. 

2. To keep them in soluble glass. Eggs treated in this way will 
be nearly as good at the end of a year as when laid down. 

There are many however who desire a simpler method, and 
to such 1 would recommend either wood ashes or salt. Wood 
ashes are excellent. Experiments conducted by the National 
Agricultural School of Germany show that eggs may be kept a 
year packed in wood ashes, with a loss of only 20 per cent. 
Wood ashes are cleanly, convenient and always at hand. Salt 
also is goo.!. LFse a grade of salt a little coarser than table salt. — 
what is called Turk's Island salt. Pack the eggs in a stone jar. 
Put in first a layer ni salt, then a layer of eggs, and so on until 
the jar is filled. Stand the eggs upon the small ends, and do not 
let them touch. Cover them completely with salt. Set the jar 
in a cool place. I have known eggs packed in this way to keep 
a year, and to be as good at the end of that time for cooking as 
if laid but a few days before. 



EGG EATING: HOW TO PREVENT IT. 

Egg eating is a vice that it is much easier to prevent than to 
cure. Where the eggs are gathered at frequent intervals, where 
the hens are supplied with plenty of material for making shells, 
where the hens are kept busy when not on the nests, egg eating 
is practically unknown. 

Egg eating, like many other bad habits, is formed more by 
accident than by design. The hen lays a soft-shelled egg. and 
before she leaves the nest crushes it under her feet. Her feathers 
become smeared. To remove the sticky substance the hen picks 
at it. and discovers that it is palatable. She not only picks the 
particles from her feathers, but also eats the portion of the egg 
that remains in the shell. The knowledge spreads, and soon egg- 
eating is common in the flock. 

The only sure cure for egg-eating is the hatchet. Before this 
is applied however an effort should be made to stop the vice. Two 



48 

or more china eggs should be placed in each nest, and plenty of 
these eggs strewn in the litter upon the floor. The nest should 
be in a dark place, and should be so arranged that it is difficult 
for the hen to get at the egg after she has laid. A nail keg makes 
an excellent nest for egg-eating hens. I have known men to 
make a double-decked nest, so that the egg after being laid would 
drop through a small hole into the receptacle below. Raw salt 
pork, chopped fine, is recommended for egg-eating hens ; but the 
best thing is never to allow them to contract the vice. 

THE FARMERS HENS. 

There is no man better situated to keep poultry at a profit 
than the farmer. His hens need not be restricted to narrow runs, 
but the greater part of the year may have the freedom of the 
fields. The waste of the farm, and what the hens themselves 
pick up on the range, goes a long way towards their support. It 
would seem that if anyone could make money on hens the farmer 
is the man. And yet one hears on every hand among farmers 
the complaint that poultry keeping does not pay. It is safe to 
say that the farmer might make two dollars off his hens where he 
now makes one, and it is the purpose of this section to show him 
how to do it. 

i. There should be a better classification. The average 
farmer's flock is made up of fowls of all breeds and varieties. 
There are Leghorns, Plymouth Rocks, Light Brahmas, and hens 
whose ancestry the most skillful genealogist could not determine. 
This is a mistake. The different breeds require different treat- 
ment. A Leghorn will keep at work and lay if confined in a 
space two feet by four. A Light Brahma needs to be compelled 
to work, or she will take on fat and be worthless for egg produc- 
tion. It is much better and more profitable to keep but one 
variety, and to make a careful study of that variety. 

There should be a better classification in respect to sex. 
There is no sense in keeping half-a-dozen roosters running with a 
flock, to eat their heads off, to worry the hens, and to continually 
fight one with another. One rooster is enough. When the 
chickens are 12 weeks old the males should be separated from the 
females and put by themselves. There should be off in the fields 
a house, which can be locked up nights, where the cockerels can 
have their headquarters. They will do much better if separated 
from the pullets, and they will get half their living off grasshop- 
pers and bugs. 



49 

There should be a better classification in respect to age. Pul- 
lets and old hens should not be allowed to run together. If the 
hens are fed as generously as the pullets they will get fat and 
stop laying. The number of old hens should be reduced. I have 
known farmers to keep hens until they were six or seven years 
old. I believe that pullets are the great egg producers and that 
it is better to renew the flock every year. But practically this is 
not always possible. Under no circumstances however should 
hens be kept over two years, if profit is a consideration. 

2. The farmer's hens should be better housed. Of all the 
creatures on the farm the hen is the most neglected. The pig 
has his pen in which he is supreme, the cow has her warm and 
comfortable tie-up, the horse has his stall ; but the hen is often 
left to roost on the great beams of the barn, or thrust down into 
that ill-smelling dungeon, the barn cellar, or compelled to live in 
a house that is swarming with lice. The farmer neglects his 
little feathered friend, and then complains because she does not 
keep him supplied with eggs at all seasons of the year. 

3. The farmer should get his chickens out earlier. Under 
favorable conditions it takes from seven to eight months for a 
pullet to mature. Where her growth is checked by cold weather 
it takes longer. It is capable of mathematical demonstration 
therefore, that if a farmer wants eggs in the fall when they bring 
the highest price he must hatch his chickens early. There is 
another advantage in hatching chickens early ; namely, the cock- 
erels may be sold for broilers. In July and August in the town 
where I live the price for broilers is 25 cents a pound, and the sup- 
ply does not equal the demand. At Thanksgiving the market is 
oversupplied with roasters, which can hardly be sold at 10 cents a 
pound. 

Farmers might make use of the incubator to some extent. 
There is a time in the spring when the duties on the farm are 
light, when the farmer might get out two or three hundred 
chickens just as well as not. 

4. The farmer should feed differently. The great staple 
food on the farm is corn. This does well enough in summer, 
when the fowls are on the range and can pick up the greater part 
of their living; but in the winter they need variety. Corn is a 
great fat-forming flesh-producing food, but does not contain all 
the elements needed for egg production. In another section I 
have given the principles that apply to feeding, and advise that 
these principles be thoroughly mastered. 



50 

POULTRY MANURE, AND HOW TO PRESERVE AND 
APPLY IT. 

The town in which I live is largely an agricultural town, and 
has as intelligent a class of farmers as is to be found anywhere. 
These men spend thousands of dollars a year for commercial fer- 
tilizers. While this money is by no means wasted and while the 
farmers derive a certain benefit from these fertilizers, yet the 
benefit is by no means in proportion to the expenditure. A few 
simple principles well held in hand would enable them to spend 
their money to much better advantage. 

It is probable that the soil on most of our farms contains all 
the elements that are needed for the production of any crop. 
Some of these elements are present in larger proportion than 
others, but all are there. These elements are liberated by the 
rains and frost, by ploughing and cultivation. There are certain 
elements however that are not liberated as fast as needed. And 
these elements are among the most important : they are nitrogen, 
potash and phosphoric acid. As they are not supplied by the soil 
as fast as they are needed they must be by the owner of the soil, 
the farmer. 

The perfect fertilizer is barnyard manure. This acts upon the 
soil mechanically, making it lighter than it would otherwise be, 
and also filling it with humus. The prepossession therefore that 
farmers have in favor of barnyard manure is well founded, and 
the practice is sound to consume the crop as far as possible at 
home and apply the refuse to the soil. But barnyard manure is 
somewhat slow in its operation. The crop needs in addition a 
stimulant. This it is the province of commercial fertilizers or 
their equivalent to furnish. 

Hen manure is a highly stimulating manure. It is also a rich 
plant food. Hen manure is highly concentrated. It is more 
than twice as valuable as sheep or hog manure, and more than 
three times as valuable as ordinary stable manure, as the follow- 
ing table will show : 



51 



a 



if. 
o 



o ~ 

PL, 


O 


a; O 

as 

> 


0.39I 


O.59I 


$3-30 


O.39O 


O.32O 


3-29 


O.29O 


O.44O 


2.02 


0.260 


O.480 


2.21 


0.500 to 


0.800 to 


7.07 


2.000 


O.9OO 





2 

Sheep 0.768 

Pigs 0.840 

Cows 0.426 

Horses 0.490 

Hen Manure 0.800 to 

2.000 

Hen manure is so powerful that great care must be taken in 
applying it. It should never be allowed to come into direct con- 
tact with the roots of the growing plant. When applied in the 
hill it should be well mixed with the soil. 

Hen manure supplies nitrogen in large quantities in the form 
of ammonia, but ammonia being a highly volatile product is 
rapidly dissipated. The problem of the poultrymen therefore in 
dealing with hen manure is to find some substance that will 
fix the ammonia. Sifted earth is not good, for it is apt to con- 
tain bacteria which act destructively on the ammonia compounds. 
Wood ashes are worse than nothing, for they do not hold ammo- 
nia, but drive it off by their caustic alkaline properties. 

The best thing I have found to preserve the ammonia in hen 
manure is gypsum or land plaster, which may be bought for 50 
cents per 100 pounds. Scatter a few handfuls of plaster over 
the droppings before you remove them in the morning, and see 
that it is thoroughly incorporated. The result is a compound as 
valuable as any commercial fertilizer. The droppings from a 
fowl in one year, when treated in this way, are worth one-half 
what it costs to feed her. 

Kainit may be substituted for plaster in case a manure par- 
ticularly rich in potash is wanted, and acid phosphate may be 
substituted for a rich phosphatic manure. Either of these sub- 
stances will fix the ammonia, and the combination is a special fer- 
tilizer of great value. 



52 

WHY THE POULTRY BUSINESS IS NOT LIKELY TO 
BE OVERDONE. 

Every now and then I come across a communication in some 
newspaper from an anxious subscriber asking if there is not a 
likelihood that the poultry business will be overdone. The 
answer usually given is, that so long as we import into the United 
States several million dollars worth of eggs and poultry each year 
there is no danger. With all due respect for editorial sagacity, 
(and I have been an editor myself), it does not seem to me that 
this answer is entirely satisfactory. The poultry products that 
are imported into the United States come largely from that por- 
tion of Canada that is contiguous to our own territory, and that for 
purposes of commerce is practically a part of our own country. 
The causes that operate to produce an increase of eggs and poul- 
try on one side of the border operate to produce a similar increase 
on the other. If the poultry business is not likely to be overdone 
it must be for other and better reasons. 

That there is a possibility that the poultry business may be 
overdone, is a proposition that I think no one will undertake 
seriously to controvert. The great problem of the present day in 
manufacturing and commercial circles is the problem of consump- 
tion. We produce more goods than we can sell, at least more 
goods than the home market requires. Why all this talk about 
expansion and the "open door?" Because we have come to a 
time in our industrial history when here in the United States we 
can produce in eight months as much as the people can consume 
in twelve, and so we need an outlet for our surplus. We must 
have wider markets, or there will be low prices, shut downs, con- 
gestion and general uncertainty in the business world. 

Why has farming been so unprofitable in New England? 
Why are there so many abandoned farms in this section? Sim- 
ply because of Western competition. We have not been able on 
our rocky, worn-out soil to compete with the virgin acres of 
the West. 

That there is a possibility that the poultry business may be 
overdone follows from these analogies. That there has been a 
large increase in poultry raising in the past 10 or 15 years is 
patent to everyone. The State census of Massachusetts shows 
that in the decade from 1885 to 1895 the poultry products of the 
State increased 73.77 per cent. What is true of Massachusetts 
is true more or less of the whole country. The profitableness of 



S3 

poultry keeping has been preached so assiduously by the agricul- 
tural and the poultry press, that about every third man one sees 
thinks of starting a poultry farm. Is not the business likely to be 
overdone and had not a careful man better keep out of it? 

One reason why the poultry business is not likely to be over- 
done lies in the very nature of the business itself. There is no 
business requiring more constant care and intelligent supervision. 

The egg is the surplus which the hen throws off after all the 
needs of her system have been supplied, the excess over and above 
what is needed to repair waste and keep her in perfect health. In 
order to produce eggs a hen must be of proper age, well nour- 
ished, in the best of health and protected from extremes of tem- 
perature. These conditions cannot be secured without constant 
care and attention. The absence of any one of these conditions 
means the lowering of the egg record. The majority of men who 
engage in the poultry business will not devote the time and atten- 
tion to it that is necessary, and consequently do not succeed. The 
poultry business is a business that cannot be entrusted wholly to 
the care of subordinates. It is almost impossible to get a salaried 
man who has the intelligence and executive ability to successfully 
supervise a large plant. Capitalists have turned their attention 
to poultry more than once as to a field that offered rich returns, 
only to find that they had underestimated the difficulties; and, 
after sinking thousands of dollars, have retired in disgust. The 
poultry business is the one business that cannot be con- 
ducted at profit on an enormous scale. Consequently there will 
always be room for careful men with some little capital. 

Another reason why the poultry business is not likely to be 
overdone lies in the fact that the demand for eggs and poultry is 
constantly on the increase. 

The United States doubles in population every 30 years. The 
present population is not far from 75,000,000, and it will be 
150,000,000 within the lifetime of many who read this book. How 
shall this great multitude be fed? The production of cereals and 
vegetables can be increased indefinitely, but not the production 
of beef. The great plains of the West and Southwest, over 
which cattle formerly ranged in countless numbers, have been 
cut up into ranches and farms. There has been a sharp advance 
in the price of all kinds of meats, and the advance is likely to be 
permanent. Fishermen return each year with smaller fares. 
The American people will be driven by the failure of other food 
supplies to an increased consumption of eggs and poultry. It is 



54 

probable that the present population could consume four times 
the eggs and poultry it now consumes, were the prices lower. 
The increase in population and the increase in consumption of 
eggs and poultry, will make a good market for the poultryman's 
products for years to come, so there is no need for anxiety. 

QUALIFICATIONS FOR A SUCCESSFUL POULTRY MAN. 

What are the qualifications for a successful poultryman? 
What equipment should a man have who wishes to engage in 
poultry raising as a pursuit? First and foremost I would men- 
tion a love for the business. The poultry business is made up 
of innumerable details. While the work is not hard yet there 
are a thousand and one things to look after. There is no creature 
with which man has to do that so quickly responds to good care 
and so quickly falls back when neglected as the hen. The ideal 
poultryman is the man who finds his reward in his work rather 
than in what the work brings in. He should have a real interest 
in his hens, should like to be with them and study them, should 
be sorry when the time comes that he must lock up for the night, 
should be glad when the time comes that he can let them out in 
the morning. The reason why women do better with hens than 
men is because they have such a liking for them. Second, the 
man who would succeed in the poultry business should have a 
realization in advance of the difficulties he will have to meet. It 
is easy to sit down with pencil and paper and figure out a profit, 
but it is not so easy to make the profit materialize. The poultry- 
man's path is not strewn with roses, by any means. From the 
day the chicks emerge peeping from the shell to the day when the 
fowls are dressed and sent to market, he has to fight cats, rats, 
hawks, skunks, foxes, lice, disease, thieves and innumerable other 
enemies. There are times when the courage of the most enthu- 
siastic gives way, and he would be glad to sell out at a decided 
discount. Third, the poultryman needs capital. He does not 
need so much capital as he would to start a bank or open a 
department store, but the more he has the better. The man with 
cash can buy to better advantage, and hold his stock until it can 
be sold at a profit. There are weeks when there is little or 
nothing coming in, but hens have to be fed just the same. I 
know men in the poultry business who are steadily losing money, 
and if they were not backed by a bank account would have to 
quit. Fourth, the poultryman must have some business ability. 



55 

He must know how to plan his work, how to buy and sell, how to 
keep accounts. He need not be a college graduate, but he must 
not be an ignoramus. If he is he will soon come to the end of 
his career. 

What rewards may a well-equipped poultryman expect? Not 
a fortune. You can count on your fingers, almost, the men who 
have made fortunes in the poultry business. And these men have 
made their money by selling birds and eggs to breeders rather 
than by catering to the regular trade. But a careful, industrious 
man, one who has a real liking for the work and has gone into it 
intelligently, may reasonably expect a good living, a pleasant 
home, health, and the independence that comes from being one's 
own master. If I were a workingman I would infinitely rather 
have the free healthful life of the poultry farm than to work in 
the heated shoe shop under the eye of a domineering boss, or to 
put in 12 to 1 6 hours a day on a trolley car, or to be a clerk in a 
great department store where I could not say my soul was 
my own. 

WHY SO MANY FAILURES? 

The poultry business has its due share of failures. Within a 
few miles of where I write there are several plants that have 
been converted to other uses, or, abandoned, have fallen into 
decay. Every now and then I meet a man who has retired from 
poultrv keeping in disgust, and who consigns the business and 
everything connected with it to the regions of unutterable woe. 

Certainly it would seem to an onlooker that there is as good a 
chance for success in the poultry business as in any other. The 
poultryman deals in a product that always sells and sells for cash. 
There is never a time when eggs do not command some market. 
It would seem a very easy matter for a poultryman to arrange 
his sales and expenses so that there will be a good margin of 
profit. The manufacturer of eggs has an advantage over other 
manufacturers, in that he can dispose of his worn-out 
machinery — the laying stock — for about what it cost to install it. 
Why then are there so many failures? 

i. One reason is that men rush into the business without 
experience. Other occupations require a long apprenticeship. In 
law, medicine or the ministry a man has to study for years before 
he is admitted to his profession. In manufacturing a man must 
be familiar with every detail, and some of the most successful 
manufacturers in the country came up from the workman's 

toTC 



56 

bench. In merchandising or banking it takes years to come to 
the front. And yet men think they can go into the poultry busi- 
ness without money, without experience, and make a success 
from the start ! 

I know a young man who came east from a great city to go 
into the poultry business. He was better off than most poultry- 
men in that he had the promise at the outset of a cash market 
for all the eggs he could produce, up to 1,000 dozen a day. It 
was fall when this young man began operations. He had no 
stock ; and, instead of picking up stock among the neighboring 
farmers as best he could, sent away for chickens that had just 
been hatched. They were a nice-looking lot, and with care in 
due time would have developed into good layers. But he had 
no brooders, and the only way the little things could keep warm 
was by huddling together. Their growth was checked, and they 
never made strong, sturdy fowls. Some of them never laid an 
egg. The young man who came east with a contract in his 
pocket to furnish 1,000 dozen of eggs a day, actually did not get 
enough for his own table and had to buy them of his neighbors ! 

It is surprising how jauntily men assume that they know all 
there is to know about the poultry business, and that there is 
nothing for them to learn. Some time ago I was called 
upon to advise some young men who had gone into the poultry 
business and were not making a success of it. They were honest, 
hard-working young fellows, had a good market for their eggs 
and stock, and yet their ledger showed a balance on the wrong 
side. "What poultry papers do you take?" I asked. "We take 
none now," was the reply. "The poultry papers have the same 
things over and over again ; we can learn nothing from them." 

No matter how experienced a man may be it pays him to 
take poultry papers, and to take a good many of them. If he 
gets a new idea once in six months he will be amply repaid. 
Then it is worth something to keep up one's enthusiasm, without 
which the work drags so that one is tempted to give it up. 

The beauty of the poultry business is that one can go into it 
in a small way at first, and learn it while he relies upon his regu- 
lar occupation to give him his daily bread. No man should 
expect to make poultry keeping his sole support until he has 
mastered it in every detail. Then the chances of failure are 
reduced to a minimum. 

2. Another reason why there are so many failures in the 
poultry business is poorly constructed and inconveniently 



57 

arranged plants. These young men of whom I spoke had one 
of the worst arranged plants I ever saw. The houses were of all 
sizes and were huddled together without any plan or system. 
The yards were too small, and the ground had become polluted 
with the droppings of generations of fowls. The houses were so 
low that as one went through them he was in constant danger of 
bumping his head or becoming stoop-shouldered. I was com- 
pelled to tell them that before they could hope to make a success 
they must completely remodel their plant, — remove the smaller 
houses to new soil and build over the larger ones. 

Curiously enough there are two diametrically opposite errors 
made in the laying-out of plants. One is to make the plant too 
costly ; the other is to make it too cheap. The former error is 
more likely to be made by wealthy men who engage in the busi- 
ness partly as a diversion ; the latter by men with small capital 
who wish to begin as cheap as possible. Hens will lay as many 
eggs in a cheap house as they will in an expensive one, provided 
it is clean, warm, snug and well-ventilated. But it is possible to 
make the house so cheap that it is shabby and inconvenient. 

Before the prospective poultryman lays out his plant it will 
pay him to visit several successful poultrymen in his neighbor- 
hood and see if he cannot learn something from them. One or 
two principles should be held firmly in mind. The laying stock 
should be in houses convenient of access, and these houses should 
be permanent and supplied with yards. The young stock should 
be on fresh ground, for the best results. Consequently their 
houses should be movable. 

The style of house that suits me best for laying stock is 60 
feet long, 12 feet wide, 6 feet posts, a roof, 9 feet from apex to 
ground. This house may be divided into four compartments of 
15 feet each, should have 8 small windows, a door at each end, 
with small doors for the hens. This house rests on a stone 
foundation and has an earth or gravel floor. The sills are 4x4, 
the studding and rafters each 2x4. 

Up this way the mills turn out what they call "siding," which 
seems to be the ideal stuff out of which to build poultry houses. 
Each piece of siding is of pine, $ of an inch thick, with a 
flange on either side. This flange joins into the flange on the 
next piece, and by matching them together a perfectly tight wall 
is secured. The advantage of this siding is that it can be put 
on almost as fast as clapboards, requires no covering except 
paint, is neat, and makes a warm and tight house. In this cold 



58 

climate a double wall on the north side, with the space between 
filled with sawdust, is advisable: but to the south of us no double 
wall is needed. The roof of this house should be of hemlock 
boards, shingled. 

If I were running an egg farm and wanted to make the most 
money with the least work I would build houses such as I have 
described, and in each house I would put ioo layers. I would 
have no partitions in the house, and would let the birds out in 
one large yard. I would not have a male bird in the house, 
nothing but females. The work of looking after such a flock 
would be slight, and if I fed them right and kept them clean I 
should expect 150 eggs a year apiece. 

3. Another reason why men fail in the poultry business is 
lack of good management. As a boy I learned from one of 
the most successful men of my acquaintance a principle that has 
been of great use all through life. Never do what the majority 
of those about you arc doing! I try to apply this principle in the 
poultry business. I aim to hatch out my chickens either earlier 
or later than my neighbors, and to have eggs when they have 
none. In the summer when everybody's hens are laying and 
eggs are cheap and poultry dear, I begin to kill off my stock ; 
and in the fall when eggs are worth something then my early- 
hatched pullets begin to get in their work. 

The ideal before the manager of every great business enter- 
prise in this country is to be independent ; that is, to produce him- 
self everything that he needs. The poultryman may apply in a 
small way the principles by which these great businesses are con- 
ducted. He should aim to produce on his own land, so far as 
possible, all he needs. He should make his hens his customers, 
and sell them his corn, oats and wheat instead of hunting up 
buyers outside. In other words he should be a manufacturer as 
well as a farmer, and the machines that he runs should be stand- 
ard-bred, up-to-date hens. 

We are on the brink of momentous changes in the poultry 
business. Eggs for the best trade are no longer to be produced 
by corn -fed hens in the old, hap-hazard way ; but are to come 
from egg farms, scientifically conducted, with each egg dated 
and guaranteed. There is lots of room for the neat, honest, 
up-to-date poultryman ! 



59 



PROFITABLE COMBINATIONS IN POULTRY CULTURE. 

One of the lessons a man learns in business is, that if he is to 
be successful he must have no unproductive capital. The man 
who puts up a block of stores as an investment finds his profits 
seriously curtailed if one of the stores is left untenanted. The 
general manager of a railroad soon discovers that he must load 
his freight cars both ways if the road is to pay a dividend. The 
superintendent of a factory learns that the same boiler that gen- 
erates power to run the machinery will furnish surplus steam to 
heat the rooms where the hands are at work and drive a dynamo 
for electric lighting. There is no waste in connection with a 
great modern business. Every by-product is utilized. Business 
is done on such a close margin now-a-days that all leaks must be 
stopped, or there will be no profits. 

The up-to-date poultryman may learn a lesson from the way 
great business enterprises are conducted. I suppose it would be 
possible for a man to make a living from poultry alone. But the 
man who should try to do this would be at a great disadvantage. 
The land that he devotes to his poultry might at the same time 
be used for something else. The food that he purchases might 
in part at least be produced at home. The time that he has on his 
hands when his poultry do not require his attention might be 
devoted to some other employment. "Don't put all your eggs in 
one basket," is as good a rule for the poultryman as for any 
other man. 

i. Poultry culture may to a limited extent be combined with 
general farming. The agricultural papers, almost without excep- 
tion, urge their readers to go into poultry raising more exten- 
sively. This is a mistake. The farmer should keep better stock, 
and should devote more attention to his poultry ; but should not 
attempt to go into poultry raising on a large scale, unless his farm 
is peculiarly adapted to it. The manufacturer of boots and shoes 
does not think of changing over his machinery so that he can 
turn out bicycles, and the superintendent of a woolen mill does 
not attempt to manufacture watches. Each man uses his plant 
for what it was intended. The section where I live is largely a 
grass growing, dairying country. The farms are large and are 
fitted up for grass-growing and cattle raising. It would be folly 
for farmers here to let their mowing machines rust and their fields 
run to weeds and sell off their cows, to engage in poultry raising. 



60 

I have known a man to do this and drop a thousand dollars a year 
while he was learning his lesson. As I have said, farmers should 
keep better stock and care for their poultry more scientifically; 
but not every farmer should think that it is his mission to start 
a poultry plant. 

2. Poultry culture may be combined with market gardening. 
The droppings from the fowls, properly taken care of, make a 
valuable fertilizer; and the market gardener, as he goes his 
rounds, can take his eggs and poultry along at the same time. 
Market gardening must be carried on in the neighborhood of some 
city or large town, and this is a good place to dispose of the 
poultry product. 

3. Poultry culture and bee keeping go well together. I do 
not know of two occupations that so fit into each other as these. 
The bee keeper's busy season comes in hot weather when the 
poultryman is not steadily employed. Bee keeping and poultry 
raising can be carried on in a village on a comparatively limited 
area. There seems to be almost a natural connection between the 
two occupations. 

4. Poultry culture and fruit growing make a good combina- 
tion. It is a well-known fact that fruit trees in poultry runs make 
a more vigorous growth and produce a larger yield than trees in 
other locations. The foliage of trees makes a grateful shade for 
the fowls, and the wormy fruit as it falls to the ground is eagerly 
devoured. The poultryman as he moves among his birds has his 
attention constantly called to his trees and can watch them more 
carefully than he could if they were away by themselves. 

5. Poultry and pet stock make a good combination for a 
specialist. The man who engages in this business must know 
how to advertise. It would hardly pay him to sell his eggs and 
fowls at market rates, when he could sell at much larger prices 
for exhibition and breeding purposes. The pet stock business is 
growing to mammoth proportions. I have a friend, a city pastor, 
who receives nearly as much from the sale of his canaries as from 
his salary. There is a man in Indiana who raises and sells 3,000 
Angora cats a year, and has 10 acres devoted to the purpose. 
There is another man in the same state who has a rabbit farm of 
60 acres, and raises 1,000.000 rabbits annually. 



61 



WHERE THE MONEY IS MADE. 

In what goes before I have endeavored to take a conservative 
view of the situation, and to avoid raising hopes that can never 
be realized. I have known too many men to drop money in the 
poultry business to advise anyone to go into it without careful 
consideration. It is easy to exaggerate the profits. In the 
majority of cases no books are kept and no account made for 
labor or food. What comes in seems like so much clear gain. 
If a strict account was kept it would be found that the profits 
in many cases were microscopic. One of the most successful prac- 
tical poultrymen that I know anything about — the man who 
makes his hens pay him better than any other man in town — told 
me that last year (1899) buying and selling on the market his 
fowls netted him 92 cents per head. This did not include labor. 
By following out the methods recommended in this book — selling 
eggs for hatching in the spring and cockerels for breeding in the 
fall, by getting out his chickens early and selling broilers for 25 
cents a pound — he actually did considerably better than this, his 
fowls netting him $1.65 apiece. Buying and selling on the mar- 
ket however he would have made only 92 cents. It will be seen 
by this that the popular impression that a hen will pay $1 a year 
above her keep is not far out of the way. The poultry business 
is no Klondike. There are a few men who make fortunes. The 
majority of poultrymen however make only about "day pay," 
say from $9 to $12 a week. There is room in the poultry busi- 
ness for quite a number of men to do much better than this, and 
to build up a business that will pay them from $1000 to $2500 
a year. 

Such men must cater to an entirely different trade from that 
catered to by the practical poultryman. They must appeal to a 
wider public. There are many men of means who have a love 
for fowls and will pay a large price for choice specimens. These 
are the fanciers. There are men that make nothing of paying 
$25 for a cock that strikes their eye, and double that sum for a 
prize winner at a large show. There are many others who can- 
not pay so much, but who do not consider $5 for a good cock at 
all out of the way. Eggs for hatching from choice birds sell 
from $2 to $5 per sitting. It will be seen that if a man can reach 
and hold this trade his chances for making money are better than 
in the more common and less amply rewarded departments of the 
business. 



62 

How may this trade be reached? In the first place a man 
must have something to sell. The public will pay a fancy price 
only for a fancy article. There are millions and millions of fowls 
in the country ; and men are not going to pay $5 to $25 for a cock 
and $2 to $5 a sitting for eggs, when they can get as good around 
home for one-fifth the amount. That is, they will not pay it 
long. The cheat is sure in the end to be discovered and exposed. 
If a man expects fancy prices he must have fancy stock. He 
must have a strain noted for egg production, or must breed prize 
winners, or' must have a variety that is becoming popular but is 
not very widely distributed as yet. 

In order to reach the trade that pays one must advertise. One 
may have the best birds in the world, but if no one knows it one 
cannot expect to sell. Printer's ink is the magic key that has 
unlocked many a treasure house. 

Advertising is an art. I am convinced as I study the poultry 
papers that even the great poultrymen have much to learn. 
Their advertisements do not catch the eye and tell the story as 
they ought. In many cases they are too diffuse, too general. 
The advertisements of breeders do not begin to compare in 
efficiency and attractiveness with the advertisements of manu- 
facturers of incubators and poultry foods. 

Persistency is an important quality in an advertiser. It takes 
time to make an impression. Herbert Spencer says that you 
must tell a man anything 600 times before he comprehends it. 
The most successful poultrymen are the men who keep hammer- 
ing away. Better a two-line advertisement coming out in every 
issue than a much larger one that appears only once in a while. 

Strikingness is another quality that an advertisement should 
possess. The advertisement should be so worded and displayed 
that it will catch the eye. The poultrymen may learn much from 
a study of good advertising in other lines. The advertising 
pages of a magazine are not the least interesting part of the peri- 
odical. See how carefully the advertisements are written, how 
artistically they are displayed. 

Courtesy must not be forgotten. Some advertisements make 
me think of the methods pursued by cheap clothing dealers in 
large cities, who buttonhole a passer-by and try to drag him in 
by main strength. Take it for granted that your readers are 
men and women of refinement and intelligence, and try to address 
them as you would if you were talking with them face to face. 

The way to prepare an advertisement is first to think out 



63 

carefully what you want to say, and then write it down. Go over 
what you have written and strike out every unnecessary word. 
Condense, condense, condense ! Go over what remains and try 
to arrange it in the most striking way. The longest and costliest 
advertisement is not necessarily the one that draws the most 
trade. A four-line advertisement, running six times, once 
brought me in $500 worth of orders. 

The man who does not have the capital to engage in the busi- 
ness on a large scale, or who does not feel competent to compete 
with breeders of established reputation, may largely increase his 
profits by imitating their methods within a limited area. Farmers 
are waking up to the importance of keeping thoroughbred stock. 
The average farmer does not feel that he can afford to pay $2 or 
even $1 for a sitting of eggs, but he will gladly pay 50 cents. 
The man who introduces a new and promising variety into his 
neighborhood, or who has a strain of any established breed noted 
for egg production, can count on a large sale of eggs for hatch- 
ing around home. It is more profitable to sell eggs to the farmers 
for 50 cents a sitting than to sell them for double that sum to cus- 
tomers out of town ; for in the latter case there is the expense for 
advertising and baskets, the time consumed in packing the eggs 
and in correspondence. The farmers will come to the house to 
get what they want. They hatch way into summer, and their 
trade is worth having. The man I referred to in the opening 
paragraph of this section as realizing $1.65 per head from his 
hens in 1899, in the hatching season sells nearly all the eggs he 
can spare to farmers for 50 cents a sitting. 

POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND. 

In this book I have told the reader how to get 200 eggs a year 
apiece from his hens. But unless he studies his flock closely and 
modifies the rules to suit his individual case he will not succeed. 
There are five points that he should keep constantly in mind : 

1. Do not let the hens get too fat. If the hens huddle 
together in a group and seem lazy and apathetic the ration is too 
rich and must be reduced. If when you lift them the hens feel 
like "lumps of lead," or if they lay small or soft-shelled eggs, 
they are too fat and must be reduced in weight. The ration I 
recommend in this book is for hens in confinement. Where hens 
have free range the noon feed should be omitted altogether, and 
the morning feed should be light if given at all. 



64 

2. Watch the droppings. These are a good key to the health 
of the fowls. In this book I have recommended a much larger 
proportion of ground bone and meat than is generally advised, 
and it may be that so much meat and ground bone will induce 
diarrhoea. If so the proportion should for a while be reduced. 

3. Be on the lookout for lice. Lice are more likely to trouble 
the male than the female, for the reason that the male is not so 
particular about taking his bath. 

4. See that your fowls are comfortable and in good health. 
The egg is the surplus after all the needs of the fowl's constitu- 
tion have been supplied. It stands to reason therefore that eggs 
cannot be produced in great quantities unless the hens are com- 
fortable and in good health. 

5. Be gentle with your birds. The hen is naturally timid 
and easily scared. When kindly treated however she becomes 
tame. Much of the pleasure in keeping fowls comes from hav- 
ing them so tame that they will let their owner work among them 
and even handle them at his will. One should never lose his 
temper, no matter how great the provocation. The hen is 
not a reasoning creature and often sorely tries her owner's 
patience. But if he never allows himself to get angry or treat 
her unkindly no matter what she may do, poultry keeping 
becomes not only a source of pleasure and profit but a means of 
moral discipline not to be despised. 

CONCLUSION. 

In preparing this book I have been governed by two consider- 
ations : economy, practicability. By economy I mean not only 
frugality in the use of money, but also frugality in the use of 
time. I am aware that the great majority of those who keep 
fowls are not able to devote their whole time to the business, but 
must combine poultry keeping with other pursuits. I have had 
this class in mind in writing this book, and have endeavored to 
show how the maximum of profit may be obtained with the min- 
imum of effort. Every statement in the book has been tested by 
actual experience, and may be relied upon implicitly. I expect to 
learn as long as I live and to modify details from time to time, 
but never expect to depart radically from the principles laid down 
in these pages. 



ARE TOD THINKING OF 



STHRTIHS B POOLTBI PLflXT? 

Then you must be interested in the price of building 
materials. 

We live in a heavily- timbered region, not far from the great 
markets, consequently we can make low prices on lumber, 
while freights are moderate. 

Our matched pine boarding or siding is just the stuff for 
poultry houses. The pieces are grooved together, so that rain and 
wind cannot get in. They can be put on as fast as clapboards. 

South of Boston a house built of matched pine boarding or 
siding requires no shingles, clapboards or roofing paper. North 
of Boston the house should have a double wall on the cold 
side, or be lined. 

Up this way scores of summer cottages and camps are 
built of our matched pine. 

Poultry houses can be built for about one dollar a run- 
ning foot. 

Do you know of any cheaper or more convenient build- 
ing material? 

Why not write us? 

S. W. CLOW & CO., 

Wolfeboro, N. H. 



GOOD LOOKERS 



AND 



GOOD LAYERS. 



Warrens White Wyandottes. 

Cockerels, $2, $3 and $5 each. Eggs, $1.50 per 15; $3 per 30; $4 per 40. 

NO INCDBATOK EGGS. STOCK LIMITED. ORDEB IN ADVANCE. 



BRED FOR BEffUTY. 

BRED FOR BUSINESS. 

EDGAR L. WARREN, Pleasant View, WOLFEBORO, N. H. 

A few 2QO=Egg Hens , 
A Good Garden, 

And your Ta ble need 
not Lack for Delicacies. 

To produce the 200-Egg hen, consult the pages of this book. 
To produce the good garden, you must start with good seeds. 
As well expect good layers from scrub poultry or to hatch 
chickens from infertile eggs, as to get a good garden from 
cheap-grade seeds. 

EASTMAN'S SEEDS 

have an established reputation for hardiness, earliness, purity, 
vigor and all that goes to make high quality in seeds. Many 
are of our own growing, and all are sold under guaranty. 
Send NOW for free catalogue. If not in the seed season, we 
will keep your address for next catalogue when issued. 

THE EASTMAN SEED CO., East Sumner, Me. 



r