NOVEMBER 15, 1912 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



potato peelings, I remember seeing some 

 that were thrown out to the chickens, and 

 which were covered up with dirt where the 

 hens were scratching. Some good strong 

 sprouts started up, and I transplanted them 

 into the garden and had some fine potatoes. 



Where \ ei y largo j.olatoes are i)ut on the 

 market, and the potato seed is expensive, 

 your suggestion of taking a very thick slice 

 of paring, and planting the buds or 

 sprouts, would no doubt effect quite a sav- 

 ing in expensive seed. 



Poultry Department 



"nothing new UNDER THE SUN ;" CON- 

 VERGENT POULTRY-YARDS^ MUSTARD. 

 CHICKENS^ ETC. 



I thought when friend Stoddard gave us 

 the convergent poultry-yard it was abso- 

 lutely a new thing, or at' least I had never 

 heard of any thing of the sort; therefore 

 I was considerably surprised to find some- 

 thing of the kind already in operation for 

 the dairy business. And now comes the 

 following from away off over the sea from 

 liie Isle of Man: 



I notice in Gleanings, Aug. 15, your remarks 

 about the convergent poultry-runs. According to 

 Lewis "Wright, in the poultry-book of 1902, a Mr. 

 Dunbar, of Bedford, Mass., had a plant of your 

 description built and planned by C. H. Payne, 

 C.E., and stated that it had been described and 

 illustrated in the Reliable Poultry Journal. 



About mustard for poultry, I use a teaspoonful 

 for six birds. I inclose a cutting giving details of 

 an experiment with mustard, and also the reason 

 for its action. 



Your special numbers have been first class ; but 

 what about goats 1 I have two nannies — Angelo- 

 Togs, and each goat gives three quarts of very 

 rich milk just after kidding, and keeps in profit 

 from 7 to 8 months. This saves buying milk; and 

 a penny saved is a penny earned. 



W. A. Teare. 



Ballashellan, Ballabeg, Isle of Man, Sept. 9. 



From the above it seems the idea was 

 in print in 1902, with the suggestion that 

 the same thing has been described and il- 

 lustrated from our good friends of the old 

 Reliable Poultry Journal. Did you ever"? 

 But that is not all. It seems also that the 

 recent story about mustard for poultry is 

 only a revival of something published 

 some time ago away off across the waters, 

 and that over in England there is and has 

 been for some time a preparation on the 

 market called "Colman's poultry mustard." 

 Our good friend who writes the above let- 

 ter submits several pages of what I take 

 to be an advertising sheet for mustard, put 

 out in August of the ]n'esent year. Full 

 particulars are given in regard to some 

 very careful exijeriments, and you know 

 our English cousins are always a careful 

 people. The outcome of all this, so at 

 least the advertising circular states, is that 

 mustard not only vei-y largely increases the 

 number of eggs laid, but it also enhances 

 the fertility and the strength and vitality 

 of the chickens after they are hatched. Now 

 can not somebody in the United States ad- 

 vertise and furnish "poultry mustard" at 



a considerably less price than the ground 

 mustard of commerce? Our good friend 

 Teare also sends us a leaflet from the 

 "Mark Lane Exj^ress Almanac" for 1910, 

 and this leaflet speaks of the advan'ages 

 of liming the soil when growing ckvers, 

 etc. 



CAN A MAN KEEP CHICKENS ON % CENT PER DAY 

 PER HEAD? 



It seems that the statement by Mr. Frederick 

 Martin, p. 772, Dec. 15, 1911, would be more 

 helpful if he would be more explicit as to what he 

 fed those 300 fowls, and prices of food at that 

 time. "Every thing purchased that was fed," and 

 fed them at a rate of 76 cents per head per year I 

 Of course we see it to be less than % of a cent 

 a day per fowl. Will some one kindly have Mr. 

 Martin tell us how he did it, or give me some 

 means of finding out how it was done ? How 

 many bees and chickens can be profitably kept on 

 one acre of land surrounded by orange-groves and 

 alfalfa, using half of the acre for alfalfa, the 

 other half for yards? I do not care to keep 



more than 40 stands of bees ; but I should like 

 300, or as many as I could handle, of laying hens 

 on one acre, which is good land, provided with 

 plenty of running water. 



Redland, Cal, March 1. ARTHUR Head. 



My good friend, you are right in think- 

 ing that 7(3 cts. per head per year is veiy 

 low ; but a good deal depends on the kind 

 of chickens and the price of grain. If you 

 have an acre of ground well stocked with 

 alfalfa, the alfalfa itself will go a great 

 way toward keei^ing chickens. But gen- 

 erally speaking, I think 300 chickens on an 

 acre is ratlier heavy stocking. Where alfal- 

 fa succeeds, there is jjrobably nothing bet- 

 ter than chickens, for it furnishes them 

 both green food and a ration that is almost 

 equal to grain besides. If Frederick Mar- 

 tin sees this he can, perhaps, give us more 

 definite information in regard to the mat- 

 ter. 



MUSTARD FOR CHICKENS^ ETC. 



It is not very often that we find in the 

 Sunday-school lesson suggestions for feed- 

 ing poultry; but in the "Pilgi-im Lesson 

 Leaves," in discussing the lesson for July 

 21, we find the following: 



Dr. William Hanna in The Designer has an in- 

 teresting travel note on this verse [Mark 4:31]. 

 He says : 



"Nowhere in the world does the mustard plant 

 attain such size as it does along the shores of the 

 Sea of Galilee, on account of its very rich soil and 

 its abundance of sulphur. One particular clump 

 of mustard plants was as high as our heads as 

 we rode through it on horseback, and it was full . 

 of hundi-eds of twittering and singing goldfinches 



