238 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 15 



you that no hen would take chickens when 

 she has been sitting only one night?" 



Right here something happened. Let me 

 digress a little. In some one of the States a 

 law was passed requiring that not only should 

 automobiles stop when horses seem fractious, 

 but that the driver should say "soothing 

 words" to the frightened animal. One of 

 the automobile journals had a good deal of 

 merriment about the "soothing words," and 

 suggested the law-givers should furnish some 

 samples of the words to be used. Well, that 

 Leghorn hen, after considering the matter a 

 little time (as any good and wise mother 

 should), evidently decided in her wise little 

 head to adopt the newcomers, even if the 

 whole thing was rather premature. She ut- 

 tered a few "soothing words" to those poor 

 " orphlings " that had never seen a hen before 

 nor heard a cluck. The effect was electrical. 

 They responded in a shout of joy. Of course, 

 it was a very small shout; but the language 

 on both sides was the method of communica- 

 tion that came straight from the great God 

 above. There were 73 in the two incubators, 

 and we gave her about half, that night, and 

 the rest the next day. It is now the wonder 

 of the neighborhood to see her march about 

 with her lock. The second night it was so 

 cold there was ice on the boards; but she 

 cared for them all without a loss. They hud- 

 dle under and over her, and around her, and 

 keep the whole inside of the barrel at nearly 

 brooder temperature. Mr. Rood looked into 

 the barrel one evening and declared we must 

 have a " flashlight " pnotograph of the happy 

 family. As nearly as I can make out, they 

 keep slowly changing places during a cold 

 night, much as the bees in a cluster change 

 places. Those that get too warm come out 

 in front and let the chil'y ones go back. 



Owing to the unusually fine weather and 

 abundant rains, lettuce has been rather a 

 drug in the northern markets, and Mr. Rood 

 has almost a quarter of an acre of the finest 

 " Big Boston" head lettuce I ever saw, with 

 no market for it. As fast as the heads threat- 

 en to burst I am taking them, by the wheel- 

 barrowful and giving them to my 25 laying 

 hens. Yesterday I got 19 eggs and 20 to-day. 

 A barrowful lasts them hardly two days; and 

 not only is their ration of grain greatly de- 

 creased, but as long as they have plenty of 

 lettuce all other garden stuff is unmolested. 

 You can throw open the gate to the poultry- 

 yard and let them have free range, thus sav- 

 ing expensive fences of netting if you give 

 them plenty of grain and water, and all the 

 lettuce they want. With eggs at 35 cts. per 

 dozen I am inclined to think it will pay to 

 grow lettuce for poultry. My flock of 70, a 

 week old, will consume two good-sized heads 

 a day. I slash it with a sharp caseknife 

 across two ways and then across the top, so 

 as to shred it small enough for them to swal- 

 low, and they seem to thrive on it with all 

 the "baby-chick food" they will take. 



OUTDOOR AIR FOR CHICKENS AND PEOPLE. 



I Before I knew I had a sitting hen I pre- 

 pared a home-made brooder by covering a 

 square five-gallon can with old clothing and 



filling it with hot water. It was placed on 

 its side a few inches over the floor, and cur- 

 tains put around it in my incubator cellar. 

 The cellar keeps pretty near 70 degrees day 

 and night, with a pretty good supply of fresh 

 air, and the chicks did very well until I gave 

 them to the hen. Mrs. Root protested, how- 

 ever. She said they wanted the outdoor sun- 

 shine, and, above all, they needed a mother. 

 She doesn't believe very much in lamp-heat- 

 ed brooders. Now listen a minute. Cyphers 

 "Hints" says the temperature of the brood- 

 er should be about 95 the first week; 90 by 

 the end, and 85 the second week, and so on. 

 The chicks in that barrel were running all 

 over the dooryard when the temperature was 

 below 50, and they were less than a week 

 old. Some of them would scud out when it 

 was only 40 early mornings, and then back 

 under the hen, or into the "cluster" in 

 front of her, until they warmed up for anoth- 

 er trip. I wish you could all see my outdoor 

 chicks, and then take a look at those in the 

 best artificially warmed poultry establish- 

 ments. You may recall that I visited several 

 of them around New York city last April. 

 If a sitting hen can "handle'' 70 chicks in 

 Florida in January, what does anybody want 

 of a brooder? Another thing: The "books" 

 tell us gravely, "Chicks should be kept in 

 the brooder 6 or 8 weeks," according to the 

 weather. 



Now, dear reader, we come to something 

 of more importance than the chicken busi- 

 ness of the whole world, even if it is the most 

 important rural occupation. Thousands of 

 human beings are kept in palatial "brood- 

 ers," warmed by artificial heat, and breath- 

 ing bad air, when there isn't a shadow of an 

 excuse for it. Elsewhere I have made edi- 

 torial notice of a wonderful book on tuber- 

 culosis by Dr. S. A Knopf. Some of the 

 beautiful pictures of the way they cure con- 

 sumptives (outdoors in the pine woods) 

 brought vividly to mind the picture of those 

 70 chicks around the mouth of their barrel. 

 The multitude of bright little eyes, and the 

 happy contented "cheep, cheep " (even with 

 a temperature of 40 outside), are never 

 found in brooders warmed with a lamp at a 

 temperature of 85 to 95— that is, unless I am 

 very much mistaken. 



While I was watching and enjoying my 

 busy mother with her flock of 70, Mrs. Root 

 said, "There is a fine automobile coming up 

 the road; don't you want to stop and see it?" 

 Please bear in mind it was not so very long 

 ago that automobiles were my latest hobby. 

 I considered a minute, and then replied. 

 "Sue, to tell the truth, just now I would not 

 trade my 'fighting mother' hen, with her 

 brood of 70, for their whole outfit — that is, 

 for my own personal use." 



In conclusion, if other hens can not be 

 made to do what this hen does, then we 

 should "get busy" and develop a strain of 

 fowls that will lay and sit, and take charge 

 of large broods from the incubator, and work 

 cheaper and do better work than any artifi- 

 cial mother ever did, or ever can do. Veri- 

 table "Florida flying-machines " they will be. 



