72 The Business Hen. 



looking for a mess of fish, and a large hen hawk he has had his eye on 

 for several days. The chicks two weeks old and less got a light lunch 

 of feed before he started out, from the same barrel as for breakfast. The 

 older chicks were getting hungry, too, but must wait for their regular 

 three meals a day. 



AFTERNOON WORK.— "After dinner the same routine of feeding 

 the chicks is gone through as in the morning. He now has time on his 

 hands again until three o'clock, and improves the opportunity to clean up 

 his buggy and harness. At 3 P. M. the buckboard is again loaded with 

 mash for the hens, using about 20 pounds less than for the morning feed, 

 since a little was left in the box. The hens are at liberty this time, and 

 come to meet him in large numbers, the wagon often being covered with 

 the greedy white beauties. This is the weak spot in feeding a number of 

 flocks that have free range. A little practice, however, enables one to 

 apportion the feed quite uniformly. 



EVENING FEED. — "The pigs get their supper (same as breakfast") 

 as soon as the hens are all fed, and at 4.30 Jesse starts out with five big 

 baskets to gather up the eggs. It takes him a few minutes more than an 

 hour to gather them and carry them up to the house, and he has 804 as the 

 result of the day's work. By 5.45 the chickens are again fed, and the 

 eggs in the incubator turned. This finishes the day's work, all except 

 pulling the wire in the brooder house and closing the entrances to the hen- 

 houses. He has used 260 pounds of feed, costing at $30 per ton, $3.90, 

 and 4J^ cans of skim-milk, costing 10 cents per can, for the hens. This 

 is a total of $4.35. The market quotation for eggs to-day is 17^2 cents. 

 We get five cents per dozen above market quotations, for our guaranteed 

 eggs at present 22^4 cents. The 804 eggs, which is rather under the 

 daily average for the past week, are thus worth $15.07, leaving a margin oi 

 profit of over $10 aside from my prospective profits in the growth of the 

 pigs and broilers. This is not a big story, but it has the merit of being 

 literally true. When cur henhouses were first built, we used to close the 

 entrances at night by pressing an electric button. The expense of keeping 

 the battery charged, and the trouble of keeping the line in perfect order 

 has caused it to fall into innocuous desuetude. We are now arranging to 

 drop and raise the doors by pulling a wire, after the plan in use in our 

 brooder houses." 



