RHODE ISLAND REDS 



241 



board door are on the south side of each house. There are no drop- 

 pings boards, neither are there any runs. The houses are not close 

 together but are scattered over the fields and pasture lots, and cattle 

 are often kept in the same fields with the fowls. The birds are rugged, 

 out-of-door stock that obtain a large amount of natural food in 

 foraging. 



This colony plan of housing and the red hens of the Rhode Island 

 farmers were at last discovered and the poultry world has reaped the 

 benefit, thanks to the pioneers who explored. 



In the old days when 49 dozen egg cases were used, it was reported 

 that one buyer, in the district, secured a load of 50 of these big 

 cases in a single trip, making his day's collection nearly 30,000 eggs. 

 This was done in the spring, and five or six other men were collecting 

 eggs at the same time along their respective routes. As a further 

 illustration of the value of the ancestors of the modern Reds, it may 

 be stated on good authority that plying between Westport, Massa- 

 chusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island, a small boat that made 

 about 25 round trips each year, between 1827 and 1850, averaged to 

 the load about 400 dozens of eggs each trip. 



The Little Compton district has been a melting pot for Asiatic, 

 Mediterranean and English stock, and the visitor to the district of a 

 few years ago saw chick- 

 ens that were plainly a 

 composition of varying 

 types, but the dominating 

 color was red. 



Wm. Tripp of Little 

 Compton and John Ma- 

 comber of Westport were 

 the early improvers of the 

 stock in the district. Both 

 of them ran teams to the 

 New Bedford, Massachu- 

 setts, market as market- 

 men. "They took the mat- 

 ter in hand (about 1854) 

 to see if they could not, by 

 crossing different strains 

 of fowls, get better layers 

 than the fowls in the sur- 

 rounding country and also 

 better looking poultry for 

 market. The result of their 

 trials was the production 

 of the so-called Rhode 

 Island Reds today. Pre- s - C Rhode Island Red cock heading 1st old 

 , pen, Madison Square Garden, New York, Jan., 



V10US to that they were 192 o. Owned by Harold Tompkins, Mass. 



