No. r DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 271 



always will be, the one place for poultry. The farmer too by thus 

 taking up a line of specialty farming, like poultry keeping, is pro- 

 vided a surer and larger income than is now being obtained by 

 a close adherence to general farming. The work with poultry is not 

 hard; is adapted to many people and is not even difficult to master, 

 if common sense, perseverance and a faithful amount of study and 

 observation be used and thus bring us to one phase of poultry keep- 

 ing — reasons for poor hatches and all the train of evils and disap- 

 pointments usually attendant therewith. 



Now if we will only remember and be firmly convinced that it is 

 Nature's idea that every egg laid should hatch and every little chick 

 (barring of course, being destroyed by natural enemies) should live 

 and that every departure from this is the fault of man (usually our- 

 selves) the reasons our eggs won't hatch and our little chickens 

 won't live ceases to belong to the realm of the mysterious and be- 

 comes something for us to set to work and find out the reason why, 

 or where we have lacked. 



Oftentimes the evil results, showing in the failure of our eggs to 

 hatch, are due as much to our sins of commission as omission. An 

 illustration of large proportions of this was afforded all over Penn- 

 sylvania in the spring months just gone by. During all of Feb- 

 ruary, the month when the first early chicks arrive, the complaint 

 was general among village, city and farm poultry keepers that eggs 

 were hatching poorly. The reason generally assigned was, the cold 

 and severe winter weather. When Spring opened early and gave 

 au exceptional early and favorable season for poultry on the farm 

 to enjoy free range or lead a normal life or something approaching 

 same, eggs quickly began to hatch well and from all reports I have 

 had, the chicken crop on farms within the State this year is large 

 and doing exceptionally well. But for the village and city poultry- 

 man, the long cold winter with snow on the ground almost without 

 a break, greatly aggravated and accentuated the effects of the usual 

 shut-in conditions such poultry is subject to, and poor hatches and 

 bad hatches continued all through April and it is only within this 

 last month that poultry keepers of this class have been getting any- 

 thing like fair hatches. 



In other words, farm eggs generally hatched poor early in the 

 season and eggs from shut in poultry hatched poor until very late in 

 the season. On the other hand I know of some poultrymen whose 

 eggs have hatched well early and late and who have got to the point 

 where they are reasonably sure of this being the rule year by year. 

 These poultrymen did not commit the grave error of simply idly let- 

 ting the snow and storm of a severe winter rob their poultry of ex- 

 ercise, fuel, pure air, of green and of animal food. These poultry 

 houses were wide open every day the sun was shining and every 

 night it was not storming or too severely cold. Arrangements were 

 such that sunshine flooded the houses and a daily chance at a 

 dust bath was not neglected under ideal conditions. There was a 

 board floor in the house so that the litter, a foot deep thereon, 

 might remain clean and dry. All grain was fed in this litter. So 

 also was grit, oyster shell and coarse beef scraps. Not too much 

 mash was fed and this had a liberal proportion of green cut clover 

 or alfalfa. (By "green" is meant young clover or alfalfa dried in 

 the shade retaining its green color and high value as a substitute 



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