1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



217 



tion workers take this up and tell us if it really 

 is possible to tell any thing about the fertility of 

 an egg just laid? There is no ina.'e>itio/t here, 

 and nothing neiL-; for hundreds of people for 

 years past have examined eggs with a tester at all 

 stages of incubation. Later I received the fol- 

 lowing: 



U you will set but lich yellow or oraoee-colored eggs you will 

 batch a fine per ceai all riKbt. Mrs. L. L. White. 



Montrose, Mo., Feb. 25. 



KILLING VERMIN ON FOWLS BY PUTTING SOME- 

 THING IN THEIR FOOD. 



Please turn back to p. 147, March 1. Well, 

 here is what I got formy dollar — no name signed, 

 and no date. 



KILL MITE. 



1 lb. hyposulphite of soda; 2 oz. Epsom salts; 1 oz. nux- 

 vomica powder. 



Dose: One tablespoonful to 25 fowls daily for three days; skip 

 three days, and repeat. 



For quick work, clean premises with carbolineum so they will 

 not become reinfected. 



Please put on your "thinking-caps," all of 

 you, and listen. How did this man Sprague, or 

 any other man, disco-fer that the above drugs, 

 in just the above i roportions, fed to fowls, would 

 banish insects } Was there any discovery at all .' 

 We have recently been told here in these pages 

 that carbinoleum will do the work. Is that other 

 stuff just a blind, or an excuse for taking the 

 dollar for less than a dozen lines on a little scrap 

 of paper .' 



1 haven't yet heard from the last party in re- 

 gard to the ten-cent deal, but I will look after it. 

 If there is a way of filling an incubator with fer- 

 tile eggs on the start, I am willing to invest more 

 money on it, since I have got started. 



I think I have said before that our incubator 

 catalogs given away every season are often worth 

 more to any one thirsting for real knowledge than 

 all the secrets and many of the books that cost 

 dollars. Well, the most valuable article I have 

 found anywhere along in the line of "nothing to 

 do but gather the eggs," is in Cypher's catalog. 

 Suppose, for instance, you should see something 

 like the following in some of the poultry jour- 

 nals : 



"a wonderful new discovery that will revolution- 

 ize POULTRY-KEEPING." 

 A " system " whereby you need not feed, nor clean out the 

 pens oftener than once a month, and yet the results will be far 

 beyond any other method. On/j am dollar far thigriat stcret. 



Wouldn't the above make a sensation — that is, 

 if people would continue to invest as they have 

 been doing? Well, the closing chapter in Cy- 

 pher's catalog contains information that pretty 

 nearly fills the bill. Here are some extracts from 

 that chapter. It refers to two test pens of sixty 

 chicks each. 



CYPHER'S " DEEP-LITTBR " METHOD OF FEEDING. 



The deep-litter-fed chicks were larger-framed birds, but not 

 ai fat. No green food was supplied the deep-litter-fed chicks, 

 except that shoit-cut and shredded alfalfa were uied as litter, and 

 portions of this material were scratched into the drinking-pans, 

 and the chicks quite often were seen eating this with apparent 

 relish. Water was supplied in all cases by the drip system. 



Deei>-litter feeding enabled the attendants to take care of fully 

 one hundred per cent more chicks than was the case with the 

 hand-led chicks; and the deep-litter, icratch-or-go-hangry method 

 produced healthier and more rigorous chicks by a large per- 

 ceatage. 



Any time the attendant looks in on deep-litter-fed chicks he 

 will find holes dug in the litter to the depth of several inches, 

 and in some cases the chicks will be entirely out of sight in the 

 holes ihey have dog, searching for chick food or grain, and work- 

 ing like little beavers for their daily ration. 



The deep-litter method is indeed a great labor-saver. The at- 

 tendant does iiof have to carry with him an alarm clock in order 

 to get back from other poultry work to feed four or five times a 

 day; once a fortnight or even once a month is all that is neces- 

 sary. Compare ihe woik of feeding chicks in deep litter once a 

 week, or once every two weeks, or even once a month, with 

 feeding them three to five times daily, and compute for yourself 

 the big saving in labor. Furthermore, by the new method less 

 food will produce more pounds of flesh, bone, and feathers, also 

 larger-framed and more vigorous chicks. 



One naturally would suppose that, if a brooding-pen were not 

 cleaned oftener than once a month, the stench would become 

 unbearable. Such has not been found to be the case in the ex- 

 periments here described. Time and again the same litter has 

 been used on Cyphers Company poultry-farm during twelve 

 weeks' experimenting, and no odor was noticeable. In eight 

 to ten inches of litter the moisture of the droppings was quickly 

 absorbed; and the chicks, by scattering the litter about, assist in 

 disposing of whatever odor is present. 



In eight cases of deep-litter feeding, compared with eight cases 

 of the hand-feeding method — in which tests the chicks were 

 hatched for two brooders at one time in order to obtain the same 

 hatching benefits— the deep-litter-fed chicks, in six out of the 

 eight tests, came into laying before the hand-fed chicks, and 

 their plumage and general condition were noticeably better. 



I will tell you why I have so muih faith in the 

 above. When I was about a dozen years old I 

 had a poultry-house on a side hill below my 

 father's horse-stables ; and by my request the 

 horse-droppings were shoveled down to the 40 or 

 50 laying hens for them to scratch over. This 

 fined-up and comparatively dry manure was then 

 banked up around the walls, and thrown over 

 my nest-boxes that were down on the sheltered 

 gravel soil. The slowly fermenting manure kept 

 the eggs from freezing; the drinking-water like- 

 wise (drip system); and as the fowls roosted on 

 low roosts they did not suffer from severe weath- 

 er. I not only had eggs all winter long, when 

 nobody else had any, but received the then un- 

 heard-of price, for a short time, of two cents for 

 each egg. I remember delivering some to the 

 rich man of the town when it was so cold they 

 froze in my little basket. I was almost ready to 

 cry about it when the good man said, " Never 

 mind, bub; as we are going to use them right 

 away they are exactly as good as if not frozen," 

 and then I trudged back to my biddies, happy to 

 think I got my /tco cents after all. This rude 

 poultry-house that gave such good results was 

 one of the " open-air " kind, I think, for I don't 

 believe I had money enough at that time to pur- 

 chase any kind of glass or sashes. I kept grain 

 all the time in the litter, and they scratched it 

 out all winter long; and, so far as I can remem- 

 ber, the house was never cleaned out until we 

 hauled the manure away in the spring, and yet 

 there was no bad odor at any time. I bargained 

 with father to put my "compound fertilizer" 

 under the hills on half of his cornfield, for the 

 excess crop of my half over his half that didn't 

 have the "treatment." I think I also did some 

 extra work on my side of the field. Of course, 

 he agreed to this, and I had almost enough the 

 most corn to carry my poultry through the next 

 winter. 



I have been finding so much fault lately with 

 poultry journals and poultry advertisers that I 

 rather enjoy saying some words of commendation. 

 On p. 148, March 1, I copied an advertisement 

 from the Poultry Herald. I found, on receiving 

 the process, that Mr. Ruel is a bee-keeper, and, of 

 course, a f^ood man. His directions for making a 

 better egg-tester than any in the market (at least 

 he thinks so), and his way of using it, are well 

 worth the "silver dime," but it should be re- 



