552 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Sept. 1 



In regard to giving chickens meat as well 

 as different grains, he writes as follows: 



Chickens are not by nature vegetarians. They re- 

 quire some meat to thrive. It has been proven in sev- 

 eral experiments that young chickens with an allow- 

 ance of meat foods make much better growth than 

 chickens with a vegetable diet, even when the chemi- 

 cal constituents and the variety of the two rations are 

 practically the same. 



Very few farmers feed any meat whatever. They 

 rely on insects to supply the deficiency. This would 

 be all right if the insects were plentiful and lasted 

 throughout the year; but as conditions are, it will pay 

 the farmer to supplement this source of food with the 

 commercial meat foods. 



After going over the book several times 

 we have decided we can do our readers no 

 greater favor than to offer it at a low price 

 clubbed with Gleanings. See A. I. Root's 

 Special Notices in this issue for particulars. 



Just one more thing in favor of the book 

 that I came pretty near overlooking. If 

 carefully read it will head off a great lot of 

 the humbugs and swindles now being adver- 

 tised to-day in our poultry-journals. As an 

 illustration, he shows how utterly impossible 

 it is to sort out the unfertile eggs before they 

 are put into an incubator. Notwithstanding 

 this, a Missouri woman (see p. 216, April 1) 

 is still advertising in many poultry-journals 

 a secret for doing this very thing. There is 

 no method known, and probably never will 

 be, to tell this until the egg has been in a 

 brooding temperature from 48 to 72 hours. 

 The author is thoroughly conversant with 

 the work that has been done at our experi- 

 ment stations in the United States and Can- 

 ada; and he uses this knowledge to help peo- 

 ple to get rid of a lot of foolish superstitions 

 connected with the poultry and egg indus- 

 try. The chapters on the care of eggs are 

 well worth a dollar to any one who has hens 

 enough to furnish a dozen eggs a day. 



In regard to where the incubator should 

 be located, after quite a valuable chapter on 

 the subject, Mr. Hastings sums it up as fol- 

 lows: 



Where incubators are run on top of the ground I 

 have found the results to be poor, and to improve, the 

 bigger and deeper and damper and warmer and less 

 ventilated the cellar is made. 



A WHITE-LEGHORN EGG-FARM. 



A few days ago somebody told me there 

 was a man within ten miles of my home who 

 had 1500 laying hens, and made it his busi- 

 ness to raise eggs for the Cleveland market, 

 devoting his whole farm to that one thing. 

 I have just paid him a visit. His name is 

 Mr. Frank Swift, and I found that he has in- 

 deed about 1500 laying hens, besides more 

 than a thousand chickens coming on. He 

 keeps them in yards of between one-fourth 

 and one-eighth of an acre each, and from 

 200 to 250 laying hens in a yard. These 250 

 laying hens all roost in one building. Most 

 of the yards have no green thing in them at 

 all unless it is peach and plum or other fruit 

 trees. But they cut grass and carry it to 

 them. Where land is not too expensive it 

 seems to me I would have larger yards, or 

 have extra yards and change the fowls from 

 one yard to another. The chickens are all 

 hatched in incubators. He has no use for 



sitting hens so far. He has three 860-egg in- 

 cubators. He has just caught on to the fire- 

 less brooder; but he thinks the chickens 

 should have artificial heat for some time at 

 first, say two or three weeks, depending on 

 the season of the year, and, of course, local- 

 ity. He feeds grain mostly, particularly corn 

 and wheat. The laying stock is fed twice or 

 three times a day. The thousand half-grown 

 chickens are all in one large lot, and are fed 

 three or four times a day, while the thousand 

 run all together, if they choose. They roost 

 nights in six colony houses after the Cyphers 

 pattern. 



When I asked if they had no trouble from 

 contagious diseases where 200 or more are 

 kept in one house, the young man who show- 

 ed us around said he could not remember 

 that they had had any trouble of that kind. 



The father was absent at the time, or per- 

 haps I should have been able to get more 

 exact particulars. They have some trouble 

 from poultry vermin, of course. If I recol- 

 lect rightly he said they used no preventive 

 except gasoline and carbolic acid sprayed on 

 the walls and roosts. Some of their houses 

 have cement walls. These are less likely to 

 harbor vermin They keep the vermin off 

 the roost-poles by dipping them in kerosene. 

 They manage sitting hens by getting them 

 all off the nests at four o'clock and shutting 

 the nest up. The nests have a long door in 

 front, hinged at the bottom. By raising it 

 up and fastening it with a button they close 

 a long string of nests at once. 



Right in the middle of August, in the 

 moulting season, he says they are getting 

 about 600 eggs a day from the 1500 hens. 

 Their laying hens are disposed of, usually, 

 when about three years old; therefore 1000 

 chickens must be raised, more or less (count- 

 ing about half as roosters) to keep up the 

 number. 



I asked the young man how long his father 

 had been keeping 1000 or more laying hens 

 right in those same yards. He said he did 

 not know, but it was about as long as he 

 could remember. 



Now, I hope friend Swift will excuse me 

 when I mention something very singular 

 about his poultry-keeping. They do not 

 read or take any poultry-journal at all, and 

 no agricultural paper having a poultry de- 

 partment; and yet Mr. Swift runs a success- 

 ful egg-farm, and keeps it up year after year. 

 I suppose there are two extremes which we 

 should avoid, and friend Swift has taken one 

 of them, if I am correct. He goes on his 

 own way, and ignores all that is going on in 

 the great outside poultry world. The other 

 extreme would be to take all the poultry- 

 journals and a great lot of agricultural pa- 

 pers, just as I am doing, and have a great lot 

 of book knowledge without much real prac- 

 tice. If I am not mistaken, a lot of people 

 have failed with egg-farms because they de- 

 pended on books too much and on the state- 

 ments in the poultry-journals. I do not won- 

 der that people who start out with honest en- 

 thusiasm become disgusted and discouraged 

 by sending for the poultry secrets that have 



