132 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



tinguished, and put in separate runs. The cockerels of the 

 Leghorn varieties can be told from the pullets when four 

 weeks old ; and at this age the chickens intended to be kept 

 for laying and breeding purposes can be fed the same as 

 laying fowls, putting those too poor for either into close 

 quarters. Boxes three feet long, two feet wide, and two 

 feet and a half high, will accommodate four pairs, if dry 

 sand or loam is put in once a week, and water kept out, until 

 you want to kill them. They should be tight except a few 

 holes for ventilation (inch holes distributed around), and the 

 front should be slatted so you can feed the chicks outside, 

 with a slide-door in centre to get the arm in to catch chick- 

 ens. After the chicks have been fed good scalded meal- 

 dough pretty dry, or boiled potatoes and meal equal parts, 

 all they will eat, make the box as dark as possible (and leave 

 ventilation enough) until you want to feed again. Three 

 times a day, I find enough for fattening chickens, and twice 

 a day, for all other fowls and chickens after they are four 

 weeks old. Previous to four weeks old, they want feeding 

 all they will eat up clean every two or three hours through 

 the day. I never disturb my chicks at night to feed them, 

 and don't feed them after five o'clock p.m. in summer, or four 

 o'clock P.M. in fall and winter. 



WHAT TO FEED LAYING HENS. 



This is a serious question, and the rock where most ama- 

 teur poultrymen get their bark astrand. As I have said 

 before, the farmer who reads knows that the composition of 

 eggs and milk is very similar ; and what will make lots of 

 good milk will make lots of good eggs, if you have laying 

 hens instead of sitting hens. Still there is this difference : 

 you may feed a cow, and get the most possible returns in 

 milk, and be fattening her for the butcher at the same time. 

 Not so with biddy. As soon as she begins to get fat, she will 

 begin to lay soft-shelled eggs ; then, perhaps, no eggs at all for 

 a while ; and then you will find her dead on the nest or some- 

 where else, stricken with apoplexy if a laying hen. If a sit- 

 ting breed, she will get broody, and be put to incubating eggs, 

 and after breaking a few, and smothering the few chicks she 

 may hatch, she will be thrown into some place in disgust by 

 her master, when the fault was his. All the Indian meal I 



