110 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Expense of keeping 17 fowls 6 months : 



10 bushels corn, $10 ; fresh meat and scraps, 



$2.50, 812 50 



Expense of keeping 86 chickens, 4 months, . 9 50 



$22 00 



Profit, $19 55 



I have reckoned the chickens only at their market value ; but 

 I would not sell my pullets for two dollars apiece. 



Keeping. 



I let my fowls run at large both winter and summer ; they 

 being a kind of fowl that have not done me much damage by 

 scratching. In the winter, I leave the south doors of my barn 

 open pleasant days. I have a shed adjoining the barn, in which 

 I keep sand, so that the fowls can have a chance of wallowing, 

 which they seem to enjoy much on warm, sunny days. 



Feeding. 



I feed my fowls three times a day, winter and summer ; and 

 they come for their meals as regularly as my hired help, and are 

 off about their own affairs. I always keep a plenty of clean 

 water by them, both in the summer and winter ; and a person 

 not acquainted with their habits would be astonished at how 

 much water they will drink daily. In the winter, to help them 

 make their eggs, I give them, two or three times a week, old 

 plastering which has been removed from buildings, pounding it 

 up until it is about the size of kernels of corn. Occasionally I 

 give them oyster-shells pounded up. Likewise I give them 

 refuse bones from the table which are soft enough to be pounded 

 or chopped up ; and also, occasionally, I give scraps, and some- 

 times cheap meat, chopped up, bones and all, with a cleaver, 

 which the hens are very fond of, two or three times a week. 



Recapitulation. 



79 dozen eggs, at 45 cents per dozen, . . . £35 55 

 36 chickens, 36 00 



$71 55 

 Expense of keeping, 22 00 



Profit, 849 55 



Wayland, September 18, 18GG. Lewis Jones. 



