THE PEOPLE'S PEACTICAL POULTRY BOOK. 9 



give my fowls great range. Eighteen acres belong to them exclusively. 

 Then the broods have the range of another big lot, and the turkeys go half a 

 mile or more from the house. The eighteen acres of poultry-yard is rough 

 land, of little use for tillage. It has a pond in it, and many rocks, and bushes, 

 and weeds, and sandy places, and ash heaps, and lime, and bones, and grass, 

 and a place which I plow up to give them worms. 



" When a hen has set, I take her box, throw out the straw and earth, let 

 it be out in the sun and rain a few days, and give it a good coat of whitewash 

 on both sides. In winter, when it is very cold, I have an old stove in their 

 house, and keep the warmth above freezing. There is also an open fire-place 

 where I build a fire in cool, wet days. They dry themselves, and when the 

 fire goes out there is a bed of ashes for them to wallow in. Summer and 

 winter my hens have all the lime, ashes and sand they want. Another reason 

 why I have such luck is because my poultry yards receive all the scraps from 

 the Metropolitan Hotel. Egg making is no easy work, and hens will not do 

 much of it without high feed. They need just what a man who works re- 

 quires wheat bread and meat. Even when wheat costs two dollars I believe 

 in feeding it to hens. As to breeds, I prefer the Brahmas, light and dark. I 

 change roosters every spring, and a man on the farm has no other duty than 

 to take care of my poultry. I frequently turn off three thousand spring 

 chickens in a single season." 



BREEDING AND MATING. 



Too many fanciers and farmers, otherwise earnest in their business, are 

 very careless concerning their fowls. Interbreeding certainly -degenerates 

 particularly when so promiscuously permitted in a flock of fowls as is com- 

 mon. There are the same good reasons for 



MAKING CHOICE OF THE BEST BREEDS OF FOWLS 



as for making the same choice in other stocks. For while a prime breed is as 

 easily reared, fed and housed as a poorer one, there is a decided difference 

 in the returns in favor of the former. If properly cared for, we do not 

 hesitate to say that fowls of superior order do yield the farmer, even, the 

 largest interest for the outlay he makes of any other stock he keeps. 



