VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 33 



and lose heart. Poultry and egg production are as legitimate lines 

 of work for persons of small or large means as are dairying, beef 

 growing, sheep husbandry, or general or special crop production. Its 

 advantages lie in its greater returns for its smaller capital investment. 

 Its disadvantages lie in the demand for greater skill, patience and 

 courage than will suffice for any other special or general farm indus- 

 try. 



RAISING CHICKENS BY NATURAL PROCESSES. 



Circumstances sometimes make it necessary to hatch and raise 

 chickens by aid of the mother hen. While we do not like the method, 

 we have practiced it; having at times as many as a hundred sitting hens 

 along the side of a room — in two tiers — one above the other. An un- 

 used tieup in a barn was taken for the incubating room and a plat- 

 form was made along the side next to the barn floor. The platform 

 was 3 feet above the floor and was 2 1-2 feet wide and 50 feet long. It 

 was divided up into 50 little stalls or nests, each 1 foot wide and 2 

 feet long, and 1 foot high. This left a 6-inch walk along in front of 

 the nests, for the hens to light on when flying up from the floor. Each 

 nest had a door made of laths at the front, so as to give ventilation. 

 It was hinged at the bottom and turned outward. Across the center 

 of each nest, a low partition was placed, so that the nesting material 

 would be kept in the back end, the nest proper. For early spring 

 work paper was put in the bottom of the nest, then an inch or two of 

 dry earth, and on that the nest, made of soft hay. 



Whenever half a dozen hens became broody they were taken in from 

 the hen house and put on the nests, each nest having a dummy egg 

 in it; the covers were then shut up and nearly every hen seemed con- 

 tented. In a day or two thirteen eggs were placed under each bird. 

 Every morning the hens were liberated as soon as it was light, when 

 they would come down of their own accord and burrow in the dry 

 dust on the floor, eat, drink, and exercise, and in twelve or fifteen 

 minutes, they would nearly all go onto the nests voluntarily. In the 

 afternoons one would occasionally be found off the eggs, looking out 

 through the slatted door. If she persisted in coming off she was ex- 

 changed for a better sitter. The double nest is necessary, otherwise 

 the discontented hen would have no room to stand up, except on her 

 nest full of eggs, and she would very likely ruin them. With the 

 double nest there was no danger of this, as she would step off the 

 nest, go to the door, and try to get out. The arrangement was sat- 

 isfactory and were it not for the lice, which were not easily gotten rid 

 of, since the chicks grew with the mother hen, we would prefer it to 

 some incubators we have used. 



The advantages of a closed room in which to confine the sitters are 

 many, as the hens are easily controlled and do not need watching as 

 they do when selecting nests for themselves, or when sitting in the 

 same room with laying hens. A room a dozen feet square could be 



