1906.] POULTRY MANAGEMENT. Ill 



a balanced ration, but those with other materials to balance 

 the ration would do no harm. Now, as I said before, I should 

 want my plant to be well watered. If there is a stream of water 

 running through the place, or there are springs here and there 

 which are accessible to the poultry, it will be a good thing. 

 Hens will go quite a distance to get water, where they do not 

 find it readily and the exercise does not harm them in the least. 

 I would also in the winter feed roots of some kind. Turnips 

 are very easily grown, and after being run through a machine 

 the hens devour them very greedily. Anything in the line of 

 roots you may have, can usually be utilized. I would also have 

 cut clover to give them. I would keep beef scrap all the year. 

 Occasionally, in the orchard I would sow some oats, throwing 

 them into the spaces between the trees, and harrow them in, 

 and then let the hens dig them out. Hens do not consider it 

 work for them to scratch. It is the natural propensity of the 

 hen to dig. As many of you know, they do pretty good work 

 of that kind in the flower garden or in the vegetable garden. 

 Even a little bit of a chick, almost as soon as it is hatched, and 

 before it has learned to toddle around much, commences to dig. 

 You place a hen where she can exercise her natural propensity 

 to dig and it will do her good, and it will be doing good in the 

 orchard. In this orchard of fifty acres you will have ten 

 thousand helpers to assist you in keeping the insects down. I 

 do not think we appreciate the capacity of ten thousand hens 

 in helping to cultivate an orchard. I will guarantee if you will 

 take some screenings once a week, and throw them near the 

 base of vour trees, the borers never would trouble that orchard. 

 Now what would be the proper course to pursue as to 

 water? Some of you may say the course I have pursued is 

 all right in the summer and fall when the ground is bare, be- 

 cause then they could go to the stream or springs for drink, but 

 that when the snow is deep and when it is cold, you say, how 

 would you manage them? I would let them eat snow. I 

 would not water them. But some of you may say, if hens are 

 allowed to look on snow or step on snow it would stop their" 

 laying. Well a good many things are said that experience 

 does not bear out. One gentleman said to me last winter at an 

 institute where I was speaking, how do you know that hens 

 will lay where you give them snow? He said that his hens 

 had snow all winter and that he had not gotten an egg. I 



