396 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



lor to new lice aud a death to the old oues. Once in two weeks we 

 want our 2x4 perches lifted from their sockets and painted with 

 the liquid. In winter this has the appearance of a frost on the 

 perches. The hen seats herself on the flat side of the perch and 

 the heat of her body will send enough of the fumes through her 

 feathers to kill the lice. A house treated in this way occasionally 

 will never be troubled with lice of any kind, and it is only hens that 

 are free from lice that can be profitable. Don't spray the straw 

 of the nests with liquid lice killer. It will taint the eggs. The 

 nest boxes should be taken out occasional!}' aud all litter removed. 

 Then if sprayed aud ventilated before the fresh straw is put in 

 there ^vill be no tainting and no lice. 



A Member : Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the gentleman a few 

 questions. If you are to keep 100 chickens would you keep them 

 all in the same house? 



MR. OER: That would be a house four times ten feet long. I 

 would not myself. I am not ready to say that it is wrong, but I 

 have found that whenever you put more than 24 or 30 hens together 

 they don't do so well. I am going to conduct an experiment this 

 year by starting and putting 200 hens together. The trouble is 

 that they will get together at the end of the house or on one perch. 

 But for my own w'ork I found we had better results if we did not 

 keep more than two dozen together. 



A Member: How do you break up hens that persist in hatching? 



MR. ORR: I will tell you how we do it. We have an extra pen 

 away from our houses and we put our hens in there. In the sum- 

 mer time we have a little park built outside the house and turn 

 them out on that right on the grass. We do not scold or tie a 

 string to her leg, but we give them all the feed they will eat, and 

 good feed that will stimulate them up to egg laying. 



A Member: Mr. Orr, if you had 100 hens running around the farm 

 how are you going to separate them? 



MR. ORR: The hen is a creature of habit. If you put 25 hens in 

 a house this fall and keep them there a little while, when you let 

 them out they will come back to the same pen; you can train them 

 to come back to the same pens in which you have been feeding them. 

 You can hardly drive them away. On the farm if you can get the 

 hen in the habit of coming back to one place for three or four times 

 you can hardly drive her away from it. 



A Member: Mr. Orr, on the average farm don't you think it 

 would be more profitable to keep the hens penned up than vuuning 

 around the farm? 



