THE PEOPLE'S PRACTICAL POULTRY BOOK. 189 



potatoes, mashed, and mixed with pork scraps and bran corn broken in a 

 coarse mill, and so on in rotation ; adding from time to time a dead horse, or 

 some other cheap and inexpensive animal food. Burned bones, pounded 

 shells, and lime, are supplied in profusion, These, with what they gather on 

 their foraging expeditions, produce a wonderful supply of eggs. 



NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE THEIR COOPS IN, RAINY WEATHER. 



During the rainy season they are not allowed to leave the coop, except 

 the day be exceedingly pleasant, and then only for a short time. They ap- 

 pear to bear their confinement remarkably well, and with hardly any decrease 

 in the quantity of eggs. While confined they are allowed an extra allowance 

 jf animal food. 



ATTENDANCE REQUISITE TO THE CARE OF SIX THOUSAND FOWLS. 



The attendants requisite to the care of these six thousand fowls are one 

 man and four boys. The houses are thoroughly cleaned once a week, and 

 the interiors whitewashed every three months. Every morning each lot of 

 fowls undergoes a careful inspection, and any one found moping or otherwise 

 indisposed is immediately taken to the hospital, and cared for ; and seldom is 

 it but what the indisposition is cured, and she takes her place back again as 

 well as ever. At evening the boys go the rounds to gather up the proceeds 

 of the day's labor, which will average two hundred dozen per day the year 

 through. 



WHEN THE KILLING TIME TAKES PLACE. 



" Killing time", takes place twice during the year in the spring, and 

 again at the commencement of the rainy season. All the early chickens are 

 thus disposed of at good prices ; and the two-year-old fowl decapitated, to 

 give room for the younger broods, as they are supposed to be past profitable 

 service after the second year. 



THE PROFITS FROM ONE YEARNS BUSINESS 



amounted to eleven thousand dollars. The sales were seventy-two thousand 

 dozen of eggs, and nearly twenty thousand chickens and two-year-olds. Mr. 

 SAN FUENTES expresses himself as being perfectly satisfied with the result 

 obtained, and intends to double his stock each year, until every two hundred 

 feet of his extensive farm has its house of fifty tenants. 



