Sec. 9.] POULTRY. 145 



them entirely from the heus ; and if tlie roosts and pen be washed with oniou 

 water, they will trouble your hens no more." 



Another writer says, hens that roost upon sassafras poles are never 

 troubled with lice. 



Now all these facts are worth knowing, as the vermin some years are un- 

 commonly numerous, and will cat more poultry than the people will, unless 

 we can head them off with some of the remedies named. 



196. Water your Door-Yard Fowls.— Fill a bottle with water and place it 

 bottom up through a hole in a board, so that its nose shall be inserted isito a 

 saucer, or any shallow, open vessel. As the fowls exhaust the water from 

 the shallow vessel, the bottle Avill pay out new snpplie>. 



197. Mode of kiiliug Fowls. — A favorite mode of killing fowls with some 

 persons is sticking an awl in the neck. They say that the blood adds to the 

 good looks and value of all sorts of poultry. 



198. Corn-Fed Gccse — Value of Corn. — The following detail of an experi- 

 ment in feeding corn to geese, by llufus Brown, of Chelsea, Orange County, 

 A'"t., is well worthy the attention of all farmers, and goes to prove that corn 

 may be as profitably fed to poultry as pigs. Mr. Brown writes : 



" In answer to your question, ' Does anybody know anything about any- 

 thing?' I answer. Yes. I know how much ten qiiarts of corn is worth. On 

 the 22d of November I shut up a flock of goslings, which, allowing the 

 usual shrinkage for dressing, would not have dressed over six pounds per 

 lioad, and would have been called scalawags, and sold accordingly at six to 

 seven cents per pound. Taking the maximum (seven cents), they would 

 have brought 42 cents each, dressed, at the time mentioned. They were put 

 in a warm, well-littered stable, allowing three to four square feet of room for 

 cacli, and kept constantly furnished with corn in the kernel and i)lenty of 

 M-ater; this constituted their entire feed. They were thus kept till Dec. 9 ; 

 they had then consumed 10 quarts each ; -when, after allowing them one day 

 of fasting, they were dressed according to the custom practiced from boyhood, 

 and which I respectfully recommend to others, viz. : after life had become 

 extinct they were carefully scalded by immersing head first in boiling water, 

 and allowed to remain .about one minute, and then taken out head first and 

 allowed to drain, and then covered in a thick woolen blanket and allowed 

 to renuiin about five minutes; then carefully picked clean; then the intes- 

 tines were drawn, their legs tied together and laid upon their backs on 

 boards in a cool place, with their necks tnrneil under and laid close to- 

 gether to keep the wings close to their sides. They were then considered 

 choice, and sold readily to the dL»aler at 10^ cents per lb., and averaged 

 10 ll)s., amounting to $1 0.5 each. Deduct 42 cents, and this leaves C>') cents 

 for the 10 quarts of corn, the market-price of which, at the time of feeding, 

 was 75 cents a bushel. 



199. Prices of PoHHry. — At the time of the great " poultry show" at Bar- 

 naul's Museum, in 1S57, there was an auction sale, and the t'ollowing prices 

 were realized, and although fancy birds brought fancy prices upon the inoro 



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