694 IOWA DEPARTMBNT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Now as my paper is somewhat lengthy for an amateur poultry fancier, 

 I will bring it to a close with a clipping entitled 



"driving a hen." 



"When a woman has a hen to drive into a coop, she takes hold of her 

 hoops with both hands, and shakes them quietly toward the delinquent, 

 and says, 'shoo there.' The hen takes one look at the object, to con- 

 vince herself that it's a woman, and then stalks majestically into the 

 coop, in perfect disgust with her own sex. 



A man don't do it that way. He goes out of doors and says 'It is singular 

 nobody in this house can drive a hen but myself,' and picking up a stick 

 of wood, hurls it at the offending biped, and observes, 'Get out of there, 

 you thief.' The hen immediately loses her reason and dashes to the 

 opposite end of the yard. The man straightway dashes after her. She 

 comes back again with her head down, her wings out, and followed by 

 an assortment of stovewood, fruit-cans, and coalclinkers, with a much 

 puffing and very mad man in the rear. 



Then she skims up on the stoop, and under the barn, and over a fence 

 or two, and around the house, and back again to the coop, all the while 

 talking as only an excited hen can talk, and all the while followed by 

 things convenient for handling, and by a man whose coat is on the 

 sawbuck, and whose hat is on the ground, and whose perspiration and 

 profanity appear to have no limit. By this time the other hens have 

 come out to take a hand in the debate and help dodge the missies — and 

 then the man says every hen on the place shall be sold in the morning, 

 and puts on his things and goes down the street, and the woman dons her 

 hoops and has every one of those hens housed and contented in two 

 minutes, and the only sound heard on the premises is the hammering by 

 the eldest boy as he mends the broken pickets." 



PROFITABLE POULTRY CULTURE. 



J. L. Todd, before Cass County Farmers" Institute. 



While a boy at home in old Ohio I can well remember the old Black 

 Spanish rooster which I called my own, and showed with great pride to the 

 neighborhood boys. Then came the old-fashioned Shanghi (Buff Cochin, 

 we call them today), that had legs as long as a turkey, and could stand 

 and eat corn off the end of a barrel. Those were wonderful chickens in 

 those days, and many dozens of eggs have I carried to market in those days 

 at five cents a dozen. But what a change from thirty-five and forty years 

 ago! After coming west to Linn county, Iowa, and settling down in life, 

 I procured some improved Buff Cochins. I wanted something better than 

 the ordinary people had, and bought eggs at fifty cents apiece and raised 



