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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July 1 



Our Homes 



By a. I. Root. 



Thou Shalt not kill.— ExODUS 20 : 13. 



Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for 

 when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life which 

 the Lord hath promised to them that love him.— JAMES 

 1:12. 



Ever since I had the Indian Runner ducks 

 I have had a longing for some more. Mrs. 

 Root and the neighbors, however, have ob- 

 jected because the ducks are so inquisitive, 

 and go everywhere. Since we have had our 

 orchard (of about an acre) fenced in with 

 poultry-netting this objection does not hold 

 — or at least the ducks would get along very 

 well inside of an acre inclosure until they 

 are fully grown unless there are too many of 

 them. A lady who writes for the Poultry 

 Advocate voices my feeling in regard to little 

 ducks. Here is what she says: 



Just now the little daughter and I are much occupied 

 with the care of two wee ducks, which we have hatch- 

 ed in one of the incubators, much to the disgust of the 

 "Boss." This is our first experience with ducks, and 

 I fear it will prove a short, sad experience, as we know 

 nothing whatever concerning the care of them. But 

 if care is all they need they certainly ought to thrive, 

 as we can not let them alone for more than fifteen min- 

 utes at a time. They are certainly the cutest, smartest 

 little fellows that we have ever attempted to raise. If 

 they should be so fortunate as to live I fear that the 

 promise which was made relative to Thanksgiving, 

 when the eggs were smuggled into the incubator, will 

 mean either a broken word or a broken heart 'or 

 hearts!. 



Well, I ordered a setting of duck eggs. I 

 shall have to explain that this season, so far, 

 our forty or fifty hens seem to insist on lay- 

 ing in just two nests. I try to have at least 

 a part of them lay in other places, but they 

 have a particular fancy for those secluded 

 nests upstairs inourtwo Philo poultry-houses. 

 See picture on page 638, May 15, 1908. 



By the way, there is a good lesson here in 

 regard to hens' nests. I am sure a flock of 

 poultry will give more eggs if they have a 

 place to lay according to their own notions. 

 It is the happy hen that lays the eggs. When 

 a hen feels the laying impulse she is very 

 fond of going off somewhere by herself out 

 of sight. One of the poultry-journals sug- 

 gests that, if you want to cure fowls of the 

 egg-eating habit, you should give them nests 

 somewhere away back in the dark. Well, 

 this upstairs to the Philo houses seems just 

 the place, and I frequently get ten or a dozen 

 and sometimes fifteen eggs out of one nest. 

 A few hens will begin laying at five in the 

 morning, and occasionally there will be an 

 egg laid as late as four in the afternoon. 

 Well, now, this house works very nicely so 

 far as gathering the eggs is concerned. You 

 do not need to stoop over. You just raise 

 one panel of the hinged roof, and reach in 

 and take out the eggs. If, however, you 

 wish to set a hen, she has got to be lifted out 

 of this upstairs room and mduced to be con- 

 tented somewhere else. You can not have 

 a sitting hen in the same apartment where a 

 dozen other hens are laying every day. For 

 the above reason I placed a sitting hen in a 

 big drygoods-box with feed and water, and 



some china eggs, about a week before my 

 duck eggs arrived. When I changed the 

 china eggs for the duck eggs the hen receiv- 

 ed them all right, and has been sitting about 

 a week. Then I concluded I would let her 

 out to get a bit of grass, take some exercise, 

 etc. I have done this frequently without 

 trouble — that is, after a hen has been confin- 

 ed to her nest for about a week she will gen- 

 erally go back then of her own accord. But 

 this hen with duck eggs, as soon as she was 

 let out, went back to her old nest upstairs. 

 I took her off the nest toward night, and in 

 order to get her back on her duck eggs gen- 

 tly I waited till after dark. 



I lifted her up carefully, and was congratu- 

 lating myself that she was going to behave 

 nicely; but when I got half way over to her 

 box she began to kick and squall. As this 

 alarmed all the rest of the poultry I shut off 

 her wind gently; but by the time we got to 

 the box she was kicking and striking, and 

 flapping with her wings, and tearing around 

 at a great rate. By the way, what a great 

 amount of muscular strength there is in a 

 good healthy hen! I succeeded in getting 

 her into the box and closing the door. She 

 went off to the further end, and set up a big 

 cackling. I concluded, however, she would 

 soon quiet down, and go over and sit on the 

 duck eggs that had already been cooling off 

 for some hours. I came around several 

 times, but she was still off in the further cor- 

 ner. I tried to reach in and get hold of her 

 so as to put her on the nest; but the box was 

 so large that I could just get my hand in 

 front of her head. She gave me several vig- 

 orous "digs" with her bill, but I could not 

 quite reach to get hold of her. Just before 

 bedtime I went out once more, but she was 

 still off in that corner. By means of a piece 

 of lath I pushed her over to where I could 

 get my hand on her; but she was by this time 

 full of fight; and to try to put a sitting hen 

 on some choice eggs while said hen is in such 

 a frame of mind was a rather difficult under- 

 taking. We often hear thaf anybody can 

 lead a horse up to the watering-trough, but 

 nobody can make him drink unless he 

 chooses." I had to give it up. My duck 

 eggs were getting cold, and I feared they 

 would get colder in spite of anything I could 

 do. In my tussle with the hen in trying to 

 put her on the nest, she scratched my right 

 nand until I noticed it was covered with 

 blood. (While I write I notice five pieces of 

 courtplaster on the wounds she gave me. ) I 

 confess that I was very much vexed. She 

 had been in that nest a week, had feed and 

 water right in her box, and ought to have 

 been a happy sitting hen; but instead of that 

 she insisted and persisted in going up into 

 that old attic where she laid her eggs, just to 

 sit on one wooden egg! 



When she scratched my hand so badly, 

 and was squalling enaugh meanwhile to raise 

 the neighborhood, I finally caught hold of 

 her legs with my right hand, and then I 

 caught hold of her head with my left hand. 

 Mrs. Root had said, a few days before, that 

 when a good fat hen wanted to sit I might 



