Mar. I. 1912 



147 



ff^cDQDLT'^^r m)E[p^[STrsfflirair 



A. I, Root 



STILL ANOTHER ''BIG DISCOVERY;" HOW TO 



"GROW " YOUR OWN BUTTER ("AS WELL 



AS EGGS ") IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD. 



Our friend Philo certainly made a big 

 stroke in introducing a short cut between 

 "producer and consumer" when he made 

 "a little |)oultry " in the back yard so much 

 the fashion; and in spite of his fearful ex- 

 aggeration at times, I think we can give 

 him a vote of thanks; but I presume it 

 never entered his mind that his " system " 

 would give buttn- as well as eggs. Well, 

 just listen, ^frs. Hoot wanted a hen for din- 

 ner; and as the Leghorn yard contains the 

 oldest hens 1 went to this yard after dark 

 and sampled a dozen hens by feeling of their 

 pelvic bones to see which were the layers, 

 until I found one very fat and plump, with 

 the said bones very near together; and as a 

 further precaution I shut her up alone for a 

 week; but, as I expected, she never laid an 

 egg. When she was killed there were no 

 eggs anywhere near maturity; but she was 

 literally a great lump of fat. When "tried 

 out " there was over a pound of nice yellow 

 "chicken oil." I suggested using it for 

 butter; and by salting to taste I find it 

 suits me even better than the butter that 

 now costs us 50 cts. at our grocers. In con- 

 sequence of the recent high jDrices for butter, 

 many are using cotton-seed oil, others oleo, 

 and Terry uses olive oil, even if it does cost 

 away up. because he thinks it even more 

 wholesome than cows' butter. Xow, why 

 in the world can we not utilize this chicken 

 fat, especially when all we can get in the 

 market is about 15 cts. i)er lb. for our fat 

 chickens — sometimes a good deal less than 

 that? Once more, we talk about the high 

 price of grain. Isn't there money in feed- 

 ing grain to chickens when, by using this 

 fat in jilace of butter, it nets you 50 cts. per 

 lb. or more? Once more, where we keep 

 feed right before our chickens, as I do (in 

 galvanized tubs hung from the roof), there 

 will be now and then a hen, even with the 

 Leghorns, that gets too fat. When this oc- 

 curs, just sort out the suspected drones, as I 

 have outlined, and make them take the 

 place of butter. By the way, every little 

 while somebody wants my opinion of the 

 " Potter system." This system isa/if/p, as 

 I have outlined; l)ut I very strongly object 

 to the way in which I'otter does business. 

 The price for his little book is an outrage. 

 His .secret has been published over and over, 

 and his requiring a signed pledge "not to 

 divulge," etc., is ridiculous. I have two or 

 more copies of the book; and when I sent 

 the money for the book, but rffumd to sign 

 my name to the jiledge of secrecy, he or they 

 signed my name t(^ the pledge without any 

 authority at all from me. What do you 

 think of such a way of doing business? 

 Finally, the discovery is not Potter's at all. 

 It is simply the Hogan flO.Oo secret of years 

 ago. Never mind the secret or secrets; let 



us all get to work and grow our own butter 

 in the Dack yard — at least until butter gets 

 down a little from off its present "high 

 stilts." 



INFERTILE EGGS, AND HOW MUCH HAS THE 

 INCUBATOR TO DO WITH IT? 



Feb. 9, at ten o'clock a.m., I put 63 duck 

 eggs into the incubator; and finding a sit- 

 ting hen when gathering the eggs, at dusk, 

 I took 13 eggs out of the incubator and plac- 

 ed them under the hen. I did this to satis- 

 fy myself in regard to several matters per- 

 taining to incubation. Well, after six days 

 I tested all the eggs, and, to my great sur- 

 prise, I found ten infertile ones out of the 

 fifty in the incubator, and not a single one 

 under the sitting hen. Every egg of her 13 

 showed plain and clear marks of fertility. 

 What have incubator manufacturers to say 

 to this? So far as I can remember, no ven- 

 der has ever advertised his machine would 

 give as many fertile eggs at the time of test 

 as a sitting hen. If 20 per cent of all the 

 eggs incubated are (with incubators) thrown 

 out as infertile, is there not a big argument 

 right here in favor of hens that has not been 

 properly considered? 



Last winter I had two or more hens that 

 hatched every duck egg given them, and 

 this winter I have had two hens bring off 

 eleven ducks each, from eleven fertile eggs. 

 There is at present (at least down here in 

 Florida) a big complaint of eggs for the in- 

 cubator being infertile; and this recalls to 

 mind the down-east "secret" of starting all 

 eggs under hens before placing them in the 

 incubator. No doubt it would give excel- 

 lent results if we could get enough hens to 

 sit all at one time. This calls to mind the 

 remark made several times recently, that 

 the first week of incubation decides at least 

 largely the outcome of the hatch. To test 

 this I took thirteen eggs that a hen sat on, 

 "off and on," for two or three days, and 

 then " threw^ up the job." < )n testing them 

 out I could not discover that they were in 

 any way hastened along, or looked dilTerent 

 from eggs that did not have this irregular 

 heat for that length of time. In the first 

 paragraph above I should have stated the 

 incubator eggs showed larger and stronger 

 germs than the eggs under the hen, indicat- 

 ing, probably, that I gave the eggs more 

 heat than did "biddy." Could this explain 

 the lack of fertility? 



FIRELESS COOKERS, FIRELESS BROODERS, 

 ETC., AND, FINALLY, THE "FIRE- 

 LESS AEROPLANE." 



liy the way, when I spoke some time ago 

 about a fireless incubator, several friends 

 took the trouble to explain to me about a 

 hot-water incubator, and called it firelrss. 

 Xow, this is not only very old, but it is in 

 no sense fireless. as you have to have a fire 

 to heat the water, and a lamp is ever so 



