POULTRY RAISING 31 



Merino Sheep. 



Sheep? Yes, at times quite a flock, which finally dwindled 

 to a trio of pure registered Merinos brought from Vermont, Two 

 of these were found dead one morning in a corn field back of the 

 barn, their throats gashed and flesh torn, victims of a vicious dog. 



We tried raising Angora goats as a business, and even had 

 visions of adding to the county's wealth as well as our own bank 

 account by their increase and yearly shearing, but after developing 

 a fondness for our choicest shrubbery they too became memories. 



Pigs. 



The Green Mountain State furnished us with some chunky 

 black Berkshire and white Yorkshire pigs, fat and solid parallelo- 

 grams, with knobbed mouths, distended cheeks, and legs so short that 

 they appeared almost to crawl, instead of walk. No, there were no 

 razor-backs in the hog pens and no ringed pigs. Experience taught 

 that if confined within small space they girdled and ruined the trees, 

 so we gave them the run of several orchards, threw grain on the 

 ground, partially burying it, and our animal plowshares did wonders 

 in industriously uprooting sod and soil, resulting in far more produc- 

 tive trees. 



The smokehouse, used as a roadway from the sty to the farm 

 help table, served also at times as a miniature Libby Prison for one 

 small boy in "knickers," whose obstreperous gaiety was thought to need 

 occasional curbing. Here also we shut up Spot, the fox terrier, on 

 gala nights when fire crackers and fireworks were in the air. Of 

 these he had such hatred that he would dash angrily into their midst 

 with utter disregard of life and limb. 

 Poultry Raising. 



Of chicken farming we took deep draughts, as is usual with 

 the amateur in this possibility-filled realm, breeding the wild 

 squawking brown, also white, Leghorns good layers, but poor setters 

 or meat-producers; the phlegmatic, good-natured partridge, buff and 

 white Cochins, feathered to their toe-nails; the barred and white 

 Plymouth Rock, the strutting, tufted Poland ; the silver penciled 

 Wyandotte, the artistocratic white, buff and black Orpington, the 

 jet black Minorca, the sprightly, trim Rhode Island Reds, the dig- 

 nified Houdan, its illustrious descendants, the Faverolles, blue 

 blooded Blue Andalusians, staring white faced Spanish, and the tiny, 

 demure Bantams, who proved more intelligent than their pompous 

 neighbors, notwithstanding the statement that a chicken's education 

 ends when a day old. The antics of a clutch of one-day-old 

 chicks gave unending diversion, lively in spite of their usual twenty- 

 four hour starvation. Small chicken houses on skids used as a 

 by-product, brought our best behaved and most aggressive insect 

 gourmands to assist in the clean-up slaughter of garden pests in 

 asparagus and strawberry beds and small fruit plantings when bloom 



