MANAGEMENT OF FOWLS 83 



and one or two cockerels. If these thrive, they may be worth 

 keeping for a year ; but if, as they mature, they do not seem 

 rugged, it is not wise to use them for laying stock. 



Where there is room to give young chickens a good grass 

 yard, a limited number can be grown to maturity year after year 

 on a town lot and used for laying and breeding purposes. Many 

 town poultry keepers who might grow a few very good chickens 

 never grow a good one because they always try to raise too many 

 for the space at their disposal. Fifty or a hundred chickens may 

 be kept until two months old on a plot of land only large enough 

 to carry twelve or fifteen to maturity. So people start out with 

 a great many more chickens than they ought to have on their 

 land, never thinking that the better their chickens do at the 

 start the sooner they will begin to overcrowd their quarters, and 

 that when that stage is reached, the promising results of several 

 months' work may in a few days be ruined beyond remedy. 

 After they are two or three months old, young chickens will not 

 make the best growth of which they are capable unless they 

 have either a great deal of room or a great deal more care than 

 most people who raise only a few, and have other work to do, 

 can afford to give them. 



SMALL FLOCKS ON ORDINARY FARMS 



Numbers in flocks. The ordinary farm flock consists of from 

 fifty to one hundred adult fowls and, during the growing sea- 

 son, from one hundred to two hundred chickens. The old 

 stock is usually kept in one or more small houses located among 

 the other outbuildings, and all run together during the day. If 

 the farmer wants to keep the fowls out of the dooryard and the 

 kitchen garden, he does not make yards for the fowls, but in- 

 closes the dooryard and garden. Outside of these the birds 

 go where they please. The coops for the young chickens are 

 often kept in the dooryard or the garden until the chickens 



