Summer Meeting. 91 



birds to begin with, of the right quality and breed, will be a good 

 commencement. As to breed or variety, any of the standard breeds 

 of chickens is safe to invest in, if well taken care of by their owner. 

 If such varieties as Brahmas, Plymouth Rocks, Orpingtons or 

 Wyandottes are selected a person cannot go amiss, either in raising 

 fowls for market or egg production. 



Provide a neat portable house for them to live in. We prefer 

 one with a good floor, six by eight feet in size, six feet high in front 

 and four feet in rear, with a paper-covered shed roof. Have a 

 level roost made of four-inch strips, about three feet above the 

 ground, over a drooping board, which should be about two feet from 

 the ground. Such house can be easily moved from one place to an- 

 other, thus giving the fowls new ground quarters, as well as new 

 pasture. By this method of moving every part of an eighty-acre 

 fruit farm, be it in cultivation or in clover, can be profitably used. 

 Innumerable bugs, worms and other injurious insects will be eaten, 

 which might otherwise in time destroy much valuable fruit and even 

 trees. We believe that the most profit can be made by keeping only 

 one variety or breed of chickens. Much fencing can be saved, and 

 free range can be given. Where practicable, turkeys and ducks 

 should be added to the poultry list. Turkeys make their living on 

 what they can find, and woe to the festive grasshoppers if turkeys 

 are on the farm. The duck will take care of bugs that may lurk 

 in its path. These are his food and medicine, and if there is one 

 thing more he needs it is a shallow lake or pond to bathe in, and 

 his duckship will set up his kingdom upon earth in fine style. 



Now, a few questions about increasing the flock. Do not get 

 the February hatching fever if you live in Missouri. It too often 

 proves fatal. There is a time for everything, a time to hatch chicks, 

 and that time is when biddy wishes to rear a family. Nature 

 teaches us that April and May are the ideal months to hatch. 

 Warm, pleasant weather, grass and clover, bugs and worms, are the 

 essentials to insure success in raising young chicks. 



If you wish to raise many chicks, and I am most sure you do, 

 start carefully with a medium-sized first-class incubator. At the 

 same time you set a number of hens. When chicks are all hatched, 

 place as many of them as possible with each mother hen. Thirty 

 chicks are none too many if warm quarters are provided. Those 

 yet left in the incubator may be put in a good brooder, whereof you 

 must be the old hen. Here is where the rocky road begins, and 

 must be carefully traveled. Never put over thirty chicks in a two 

 hundred chick size brooder. This does not sound like the gilded 



