No. L] POULTRY KEEPING. 423 



to attempt to .secure a second cutting. Such, at any rate, is 

 the testimony of many who have tried both ways. 



There are many farms where a lew acres of mowing land 

 heavily manured with hen manure give a very abundant 

 crop of hay each year; but I want to mention one in par- 

 ticular, where, largely through the use of hen manure 

 (though it is a combined dairy and poultry farm), applied 

 both by the fowls themselves and in bulk by the farmers, 

 the cut of grass has been enormously increased in a few 

 years. When the present owner took this farm of about 

 100 acres, some seven years ago, it would not cut one ton 

 of hay. It had been a very much neglected if not literally 

 an abandoned farm. Last year it cut forty tons of hay, and 

 within a year or two, as additional portions of it are brought 

 into a high state of productiveness, the farm will cut a hun- 

 dred tons of hay per annum. 



Combination almost Inevitable. 



But grass, though a profitable crop, and made more prof- 

 itable through the agency of the hens, is not a crop that 

 can be used to any great extent as poultry food. Some 

 clover rowen, cut in good season and nicely cured, the hens 

 can use to good advantage ; but it is hardly worth while to 

 attempt to use for poultry food any but clover or alfalfa hay, 

 and a small piece of ground will furnish enough of either of 

 these for quite a large stock of poultry. So it becomes a 

 question, to be decided by each farmer according to his cir- 

 cumstances, whether it will be more profitable for him to 

 have as much as possible of the farm in grass, sell hay and 

 buy grain, or to endeavor to grow as much as possible of 

 the grain needed. Or, to put the question the opposite way 

 and from a farmer's rather than from a poultry keeper's stand- 

 point : supposing a farm a considerable part of which is suit- 

 able for grain growing, will it pay better to sell the grain, 

 or to feed it to stock on the farm? 



I think that it is to-day a commonly accepted principle in 

 farming, that, to maintain or increase the crop-producing 

 capacity of a farm, as much as possible of the produce must 

 be fed on the farm, the nutritious portions converted into 

 produce of small bulk and easily handled, and the residue 



