1883.] POULTRY RAISING. 45 



As soon as the birds weigh one pound, those not wanted for 

 stock may be sent alive to market as broilers. They will bring 

 nearly as much money then as when older, and will leave room for 

 the younger ones. 



When the sitting time is over, and eggs are cheap, about the 

 last of June, is the time to send to market the fat old hens. Few 

 are worth keeping after they are two years old. If of the Asiatic 

 breeds they will be too fat to safely endure the summer — there- 

 fore we send them alive to the New York market. The weather 

 is usually too hot to allow sending them dressed, especially as the 

 majority of New Yorkers are still so far behind the times in 

 hygienic matters as to prefer the undrawn poultry. In cool 

 weather it will pay to undertake the extra labor of dressing; and 

 for marketing to private families they are always drawn, washed, 

 and made quite ready for cooking. 



While fattening they are confined in a dark coop and fed corn 

 meal scalded and seasoned with salt and pepper twice a day, with 

 abundance of whole corn at night. Nothing should be given them 

 for twenty-four hours before killing. 



After July comes the most leisurely season to the poultry 

 keeper, if it can ever be said he has any vacation, for it seems to 

 us that eternal vigilance is not only the pripe of liberty but of 

 eggs and chickens. Any hens that want lo sit at this untimely 

 season are consigned either to the chopping-block, or to a cool 

 " retreat " under the apple trees, where they can meditate at will 

 on the "might have been; " and if the old cocks crow two early, 

 or too loud and too frequently, and so disturb the sensitive nerves 

 of some invalid member of their master's family, they too are 

 politely requested to share the satne domicile, whose prison walls 

 keep them from saucily clapping their wings under the chamber 

 windows. 



All the fowls have free range during the summer and fall, and 

 are fed wheat screenings or oats once a day, and once with scalded 

 meal and bran. Very little corn is fed in summer, but in the fall 

 they often get more than is best for them by helping themselves 

 at the pile by the pig-pen. Yet this is not altogether an evil, for 

 we find when the fowls are well fed — full fed — they will continue 

 in many cases to lay through the entii'e moulting season, and will 

 renew their feathers so slowly it will make no special drain upon 

 the system ; and so they escape in great measure any inconvenience 



