HINTS ABOUT MANAGEMENT. 105 



plumage, the sooner will they begin to lay in the autumn. 

 Pallets usually begin to lay as soon as they are com- 

 pletely plumed as adult fowls. It is worth while, there- 

 fore, to encourage moulting in every way, giving them 

 exercise, insect food, or fish in their ration, with ground 

 bone, ground oyster-shell, and sound grain. A table- 

 spoonful of fine salt in the soft feed, given daily to a 

 flock of twenty hens, will be a fair allowance. Fowls do 

 not depend upon this for the salt which their bodies and 

 feathers contain, for either the material itself, or the 

 elements of which it is composed, exist to a greater or 

 less extent in almost all the food they eat and the water 

 they drink; and what we do by giving them salt is simply 

 to increase the supply. 



GEEEN FOOD FOR FOWLS. 



Fowls cannot be kept healthy without a good range, 

 or a supply of green food in their yards. An excellent 

 plan is, to have a roomy yard provided for them, and 

 plant it with plum or dwarf pear trees. Plum-trees are 

 very little troubled by curculios when planted in a 

 chicken-yard, and good crops of fruit are secured, bar- 

 ring accidents of weather at the blooming season. The 

 yard is divided into two parts; one is used for a month, 

 while the other is growing up with some green crop, as 

 turnips, oats, peas, rape, or mustard, which are very ac- 

 ceptable to the fowls. This yard is then used, and the 

 other is plowed and immediately sown. This keeps the 

 ground clean, provides suitable food, and avoids most 

 effectively the troublesome disease known as gapes; the 

 fatal cholera is also evaded by this management; the 

 health being improved, more eggs will be laid. 



