672 fiOAilD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Rocks making- the poorest record. Yet many get good egg yields from 

 Barred Rocks and will continue to do so. 



So many farmers seem to get into one old rut and continue to keep 

 the same old stock just because there isn't much in the chicken business 

 anyway. If the man of the house does not want to get good stock, give 

 the women a chance. Usually most of the care of poultry falls to the 

 wife anyway. If she is furnished a warm house for her poultry, with 

 a few good crops, she will make more clear money from her flock of 

 hens than will her husVjand with his best brood mare. In conclusion, 

 let me urge farmers to improve their poultry and poultry surroundings. 

 Give the son or daughter a chance to own some thoroughbred stock. 

 Buy the boy a pen of good fowls and give him a start, procuring good 

 poultry papers, etc., for his reading, and you will not find your son 

 leaving the farm for the already overcrowded city. 



POULTRY. 



MR8. GEO. RAY, FRANKLIN, IND. 



[Read before Johnson County Institute.] 



I have been asked to say something about poultry. Have never had 

 any experience with any kind of poultry except turkeys and chickens, 

 and not very much with turkeys, having raised turkeys only two years. 

 I did verj^ well; but thej^ are too much trouble for the profit there is 

 in them. 



Turkeys are all right if they would stay at home. No one likes to be 

 bothered with some one else's turkeys, so I will tell you what I think of 

 chickens. 



At the first of the year I arrange to have my flock of chickens 

 number about seventy-five thrifty hens. With the hen house cleaned 

 and new nests it is not long before I will have a few hens that will want 

 to sit. I always try to get as many hens to go to sitting as soon as 

 possible, so I can give each hen I take off the nest about twenty-five 

 chicks. 



Those I leave on the nest I give fresh nests and fresh eggs, and they 

 will set the second time as well as they did the first time, and with proper 

 care will look as Avell as when hatching tlie first time. 



My coops are box coops, 20 by 24 inches, with the roof running 

 one way and one side open. This I can set to the south, and with 

 another coop made of slats to let the hen and chicks in in the day-time. 

 I can keep a hen and twenty-five chicks in the worst weather we have. 



