336 Eggs and Poultry. — Detail of Experience in Farming. Vol. XI- 



Eggs and Ponltry, 



Among all nations, and throughout all 

 grades of society, eggs have been considered 

 a favourite food. But in our cities, and par- 

 ticularly in winter, they are sold at such 

 prices that few families could afford to use 

 them at all, and even those in easy circum- 

 stances consider them too expensive for com- 

 mon use. There is no need of this. Every 

 family, or nearly every family, can, with 

 very little trouble, have eggs in plenty du- 

 ring the year; and of all the animals domes- 

 ticated for the use of man, the common dung- 

 hill fowl is capable of yielding the greatest 

 profit to the owner. In the month of No- 

 vember, I put apart eleven hens and a cock, 

 gave them a small chamber in the wood- 

 house, defendedjrom storm, with an opening 

 to the South. Then food, water and lime 

 were placed on shelves convenient for them, 

 with nests and chalk nest-eggs in plenty. 

 These hens continued to lay eggs through- 

 out the winter. From these eleven hens I 

 received an average of six eggs daily during 

 winter; and whenever any one of them was 

 disposed to sit, namely, as soon as she began 

 to chuck, she was separated from the others 

 by a grated partition and her apartment dark- 

 ened. These chucklers were well attended 

 to and well fed. They could see and partly 

 associate through the grates with the other 

 fowls, and as soon as any of these prisoners 

 began to sing, she was liberated, and would 

 very soon lay eggs. It is a pleasant thing 

 to feed and tend a bevy of laying hens. They 

 may be tamed so as to follow the children, 

 and will lay in a box. Eggshells contain 

 lime, and when in winter the earth is co- 

 vered with frost or snow, if lime be not pro- 

 vided for them, they will not lay; or if they 

 do, the eggs of necessity must be without 

 shells. Old rubbish lime from chimneys 

 and old buildings, is proper for them and 

 need only to be broken. They will often 

 attempt to swallow pieces of lime and plas- 

 ter as large as walnuts. The singing hen 

 will certainly lay eggs if she find all things 

 agreeable to her, but the hen is so much a 

 prude — as watchful as a weazle and fastidi- 

 ous as a hypocrite — she must, she will have 

 secrecy and mystery about her nest. All 

 eyes but her own must be averted. Follow 

 or watch her, and she will forsake her nest 

 and stop laying. She is best pleased with a 

 box covered at the top, with a back side ap- 

 erture for light, and a side door by which 

 she can escape unseen. A farmer may keep 

 one hundred fowls in the barn, may sufier 

 them to trample on and destroy his mows of 

 grain, and have fewer eggs than the cot- 

 tager who keeps a dozen, provides secret 



nests, chalk eggs, pounded bricks, plenty of 

 corn or other grain, water and gravel for 

 them, and takes care that his hens be not 

 disturbed about their nests. Three chalk 

 eggs in a nest are better than one, and large 

 eggs please them most. I have smiled to 

 see them fondle round and lay in a nest of 

 geese eggs. Pullets will begin to lay early 

 in life, when nests and eggs are plenty, and 

 when others are chuckling around them. A 

 dozen dunghill fowls shut up from the means 

 of obtaining food, will require something 

 more than a quart of corn a day. I think 

 fifteen bushels a year a fair allowance for 

 them; but more or less, let them always 

 have enough by them ; and after they have 

 become habituated to find at all times a 

 plenty in their little manger, they take but 

 a few kernels at a time, except just before 

 going to roost, when they will take nearly a 

 spoonful in their crops. But just so sure aa 

 their provisions come to them scanted or ir- 

 regularly, so sure will they raven up a 

 whole cropful at a time and stop laying. A 

 dozen hens well attended, will furnish a 

 family with more than two thousand eggs a 

 year; and one hundred full grown chickens 

 for the fall and winter stores. The expense 

 of feeding a dozen fowls will not amount to 

 more than eighteen bushels of grain. They 

 may be kept in cities as well as in the coun- 

 try, will do as well shut up the year round, 

 as to run at large. A grated room well 

 lighted, ten feet by five, partitioned from a 

 stable or other out-house, is sufficient for the 

 dozen fowls with their roosting, nests and 

 fiseding troughs. In the spring of the year 

 five or six hens will hatch at a time, and the 

 fifty or sixty chickens may be given to one 

 hen. Two hens will take care of one hun- 

 dred chickens well enough until they begin 

 to climb their little stick roosts. They then 

 should be separated from the hens entirely. 

 I have often kept the chickens when young 

 in my garden. They keep the May bugs 

 and other insects from the vines. In case 

 of confining fowls in summer, it should be 

 remembered that a ground floor should be 

 chosen; or it would be just as well to set in 

 their pens, boxes of well dried, pulverized 

 earth, for them to wallow in during warm 

 weather. Their pens should be kept clean. 

 — Scottish Gazette. 



From the Cultivator. 



Detail of Experience in Farming. 



I HAVE read the Cultivator a long time, 

 and find it full of entertaining matter. I 

 here give you a short account of a long expe- 

 rience in farming. In 1795, I commenced 

 for myself, in the town of Stanford, Dutchess 



