430 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



your ground will admit — the longer the bet- 

 ter. Friend Stoddard recommends letting 

 sitting hens severely alone. Instead of an- 

 noying them and getting them out of temper 

 by human intervention, he lets the great 

 God who made them do all the managing, 

 or, in other words, he lets them follow out 

 their own wonderful instinct. Let me di- 

 gress a little right here : 



Along about the first of April, in our 

 Florida home, Wesley announced that a 

 Leghorn hen had just come out of the brush 

 with a fine brood of chickens. We went 

 down, picked up the hen, gathered up her 

 fifteen chicks, and put them in a coop. She 

 behaved so nicely that I began to think she 

 was a jewel of a mother. By some mishap, 

 however, one of the chicks got out of the 

 box just as we thought every thing was all 

 right for the night; and when I tried to 

 catch the chick her motherly instincts all at 

 once were aroused. She got out of the box, 

 and I had one of the biggest fights I ever 

 had with a sitting hen. We finally got her 

 put back, and I kept her several days shut 

 in a coop. Finally I decided to let her go 

 out for exercise. Her first performance 

 was to dig the mulch away from the fruit- 

 trees in our dooryard, sending the di-ied 

 Bermuda grass " sky high " in her search 

 for crickets for her brood of fifteen. When 

 we " shooed " her out if the dooryard she 

 got over into the cornfield; and when the 

 chicks were a week old, she and they had 

 been pretty much all over the premises. The 

 fences of the convergent poultry-yard were 

 no obstacles to her at all. In fact, her daily 

 plan of getting over one particularly high 

 fence was to fly up to a limb on a pine tree, 

 twenty feet or more from the ground. She 

 would fly right straight up and alight on 

 that limb, and, after resting a while, sail 

 down or " glide " as the flying-machine men 

 do. The chicks were very soon following 

 her everywhere. They did not need any 

 feeding nor any thing else, apparently, for 

 God's earth was fruitful enough and broad 

 enough to give them all things needed. By 

 the way, is there not here a lesson for poor 

 humanity f If the fathers and mothers of 

 our land had the grip and faith in their own 

 muscles, and the ability to see what God has 

 spread out before us, I do not think there 

 would be much complaint about " the high 

 cost of living." 



Well, when we came away Mrs. Root de- 

 clared that this particular hen would have 

 to be sold with the rest of the two-year-old 

 layers. The chicks were then about three 

 weeks old; but they had become so inde- 

 pendent that they did not seem to mind the 

 loss of their mother at all. They were the 

 last to get home at night so I could shut 



them up, and about the first to get out in 

 the morning. Now, Providence permitting, 

 I am going to raise a strain of chickens 

 from these fifteen, even if they do defy 

 fences and every other obstruction. I take 

 it the little family is still unbroken. See 

 the following letter. 



Mr. A. I. Boot: — Wesley came last Saturday, the 

 lOtli, dug the Irish potatoes, and sold the best of 

 them and put the rest into the barrel in the cellar, 

 and covered them with dry sand and put wire screen 

 over to keep rats out. He dressed out the dasheens, 

 and sprayed the chicken-house with kerosene to kill 

 the mites. My dasheen looks very well, but rain 

 would do them good. The fifteen little chicks seem to 

 be doing well. They come over to see us every day 

 and gather whatever bugs they can find. There is 

 nothing they can harm, and we like to have them 

 catch the bugs. 



Bradentown, Fla., May 19. C. L. Harrison. 



FRIEND STODDARD^S LATEST INVENTION. 



You will notice in the above extract he 

 has been studying on some plan of letting 

 a sitting hen remain right on the nest where 

 she first wanted to sit. She is not only to 

 have a nest all to herself, but she is to have 

 liberty to go otf and fly on top of the fences 

 or even on top of the barn if she chooses, 

 and come back when she is ready. Come to 

 think of it, however, she can not fly up on 

 top of the barn, for tlais long narrow 

 yard is to be covered overhead with poultry- 

 netting or a few boards to give shade, say 

 over the nest-box. Now for his plan for 

 accomplishing all this or letting the poultry 

 themselves accomplish it: The hens that lay 

 the eggs to be used for hatching are in one 

 yard. Adjoining this yard are the poultry- 

 nests, each one having a runway, as I have 

 explained. Of course we use nests enough 

 (each with its little yard) so as to have one 

 for each of the sitting hens, more or less. 

 Each nest has a little door. If you close all 

 ' but one, and there are no other available 

 nests in the yard, or connected with it, your 

 flock of probably 12 or 25 will all lay in 

 that nest. If the nest is a good-sized one, 

 shaded and ventilated, and at the same time 

 darkened and secluded, a dozen hens may 

 lay their eggs in it during the day. 



There is one nest in my yard that the 

 hens all seem to prefer, and several times 

 I have found eleven eggs in that nest. By 

 the way, down in Florida hens frequently 

 begin to lay between six and seven o'clock 

 in the morning, and quite often there are 

 more or less eggs laid as late as four o'clock 

 or even later. It seems to be a natural in- 

 stinct on the part of the hens to lay where 

 there is a nestful. You may recall the fact 

 that I could not get the hens to lay in my 

 newly planned nest until I put three or 

 four eggs, just laid, in that nest. After 

 that, they would lay there right along. 

 Well, after the whole 12 or 25 have got a 



