300 HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



as necessai\v for little chicks as for adult fowls, though few 

 are apparently aware of this fact. 



If you choose, you can supply your own cracked bones 

 and oyster- shells, at very little if any expense, and, what 

 is also an important item, have them always at hand. 



After the bones left from the table have been thrown 

 out for the poultry to pick clean — and you may trust them 

 to do their work well — gather them up and keep them 

 where they will be dry. 



For our own use we prefer putting the bones in a drip- 

 ping-pan and setting them in the oven till they are a light 

 brown, not that it is necessary, but we believe that bones 

 partially burned serve a double purpose— the poultry ob- 

 tain the bone ingredients, and also a slight dose of animal 

 charcoal, which is a splendid digestive medicine. 



When the bones are "done brown," we drop them into 

 a little hand-mill that is a famous devourer of bones, dry 

 or green, corn, oats, oyster-shells, cotton-seed, or, in fact, 

 of any thing else that may need grinding, either fine, like 

 meal, or coarse. 



Possessing one of these wonderful little workers, which 

 cost but $5, or, with iron legs, $7, a family may provide 

 its poultry with an abundance of the cracked bone and 

 oyster-shells, so important, as every one knows, to their 

 well-being. This, where so many of us live remote from 

 commercial centers, is of itself a great thing. Besides, 

 when cracked corn is wanted for little chickens, all one has 

 to do is to drop the whole corn into the jaws of the Little 

 Giant, a few turns of the wheel, and lo I it disgorges the 

 grain, digested and in just the right shape for the hungry 

 little ones. Is cotton-seed wanted for stock food or fertil- 

 izers? drop in the seed and out it comes as fine a meal as 

 you choose. Is corn-meal wanted for the table ? you have 

 it at a few turns of the wrist. Crackers may be made into 



