422 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



In the localities in this State where soft roasters are grown 

 extensively for the Boston market, intensive methods are 

 necessarily pursued ; but the strictest care is taken to pre- 

 vent poisoning of the ground over which the chickens run 

 each year. After a crop of chickens is all sold, — the last 

 of them generally going to market in July, — the fences are 

 all removed and the whole plot of ground occupied by the 

 yards is plowed deep and sowed to winter rye. Thus the 

 ground is thoroughly cleansed each year, and at the same 

 time the work of purifying it is paid for by the crop of 

 green rye, which furnishes green food to the next crop of 

 chickens. 



So far we have not considered the manure from the young 

 stock grown for laying and breeding purposes. A consider- 

 able part of this, deposited in coops, brooders and brooder 

 runs, must be handled like that of the general stock collected 

 from the houses or deposited in the yards. But, to secure 

 the best possible development of the growing chicks, they 

 must be given good, clean range from the weaning age until 

 maturity. It is possible to give them such range on ground 

 that is not productive. They will do well on light sandy or 

 gravelly soil that is washed clean of their droppings by every 

 heavy rain. They will do well on a field so full of boulders 

 that it can neither be tilled nor mowed. But the loss of 

 manure under such conditions is considerable, and it is an 

 absolute loss. Besides, while chicks do well on such land 

 as has been described, they do as well or better on good 

 grass land ; and, as chickens grown for stock or laying pur- 

 poses are rarely large enough to be distributed over a range 

 in roosting coops until about haying time, it is possible to 

 use the same land to grow a crop of grass, and after that 

 as a range for chicks, and thus utilize on this land every bit 

 of the manure they make during the season, it being spread 

 thinly and (mite evenly on the land as the chickens range 

 over it. Running chickens on this land prevents cutting a 

 second crop of grass the same season ; but as cows and 

 chickens combine nicely, and as, if the chickens are as well 

 spread out as they should be, they do not spoil the grass for 

 pasture for the cows, to use the mowing land for pasture for 

 cows and chickens after the first crop is off pays better than 



