MANAGEMENT OF FOWLS 105 



most poultry plants where a much greater product per hen is 

 secured. Even when eggs are the most important money crop 

 on the farm, the care of the laying hens is but a small part of 

 the day's work of the man who looks after them. 



How the chickens are grown. The number of chickens reared 

 each year on one of these colony farms is usually about equal to 

 the number of fowls kept. Where there are so many hens of a 

 sitting variety, and very early hatching is not practiced, there is 

 rarely any shortage of sitting hens at the time when they are 

 wanted. Usually twenty or thirty hens are set at the same time, 

 and it is expected that they will hatch eight or ten chickens 



FIG. 105. Colony houses at Hampton Institute 



each. Sometimes sixty or seventy hens are set at one time. As 

 it is almost always quite warm when the chickens are hatched, it 

 is customary to give each hen twenty or more chickens. The 

 coops are placed in rows, several rods apart each way, on a 

 piece of grassland that has had no poultry on it for a year or 

 more. Most of the farmers are very particular on this point, 

 and prefer to put the young chickens on land on which there 

 has been no poultry for at least two years. They have learned 

 by experience that under such conditions they can rear a much 

 larger percentage of the chickens hatched, and that the chickens 

 will grow more evenly and mature earlier. In planning the 

 field crops grown on the farm they always try to arrange so 



