90 AN EGG FARM. 



turning a cock. Or, in the region of mild weather 

 previously described, a float valve can be used during the 

 greater part of the year to govern the supply and the 

 attendant need not lift a finger. For the greatest con- 

 venience in feeding grain, bins are located in the oper- 

 ating rooms, m, Fig. 27, and access to the feed shelves 

 is by doors at t, leading from the operating rooms into 

 the small covered yards, and by the door, s, which leads 

 to the shelves in the main building. The shelves are of 

 course loaded by rule, an exact quantity of grain being 

 placed on each daily, and all fed that day to the last 

 kernel, so that rats will not be baited to the premises at 

 night. The operation of charging the feed shelves is a 

 very quick one, their hight from the ground being con- 

 venient, four feet in the main building and three feet in 

 the covered yards. With a shallow scoop of just the 

 proper size and shape, the attendant distributes grain as 

 fast as he can walk, about five hundred feet of shelves 

 being tended in less than fifteen minutes, and one charge 

 lasts all day. 



The curved dotted lines in the big yards in the 

 ground plan, Fig. 27, show the location of board fences, 

 or rims, they may be called, since they are only one foot 

 high. The yard is plentifully supplied with straw for 

 scratching purposes and these rims are to keep it from 

 getting into the corners of the yard. The wide gates in 

 the center, at right and left in the cut, admit a team 

 hitched to a hay tedder or to a side delivery rake. The 

 area in which these implements are to be used is not 

 circular, as the cut might appear to indicate, but ellip- 

 tical, for as before stated, the cut was reduced to suit the 

 limits of a page. The circuit then is as liberal as an 

 ellipse occupying nearly all the space in a yard one hun- 

 dred and forty-four feet by fifty feet. Plowing and har- 

 rowing, as well as raking, can be handily done in this 

 ellipse on the occasions of the removal of the old straw 



