126 POULTRT-CRAFT. 



168. What to Use for Scratching Litter. Straw and cheap hay 

 make the best scratching litter. Those who grow their own grain, and those 

 who can get sheaf grain sometimes feed it unthreshed. Dry leaves, raked up 

 in the fall and stored to be used as needed, make good litter, but break up 

 quickly, and are not as easily handled as straw. On a large plant provision 

 must be made for a regular supply of litter in quantity. Sometimes the 

 rough manure, mostly soiled and broken straw from livery stables, can be 

 had for the hauling. It usually contains more than enough grain to pay for 

 hauling it. This can be used only in yards* or open sheds. Damp litter 

 should never be allowed to remain in the poultry house, much less be put 

 there. A poultryman who can get the old bedding from a race track stable 

 should consider himself in luck, for it is nearly all good clean straw, but little 

 broken and soiled, and contains much good grain. In many places good 

 straw is so cheap that it is the cheapest litter obtainable. When straw costs 

 from five to eight dollars a ton it is time for those who use much to look for 

 cheaper stuff. When only enough litter for a few pens is needed, baled 

 straw, (even at the prices named) may be used. Shavings or other clean 

 rubbish almost anything that conceals the grain, and can be " scratched '," 

 will do. 



169. To Keep a Scratching Floor in Good Order the litter must be 

 often renewed, and yet be always in nearly the same condition. When litter 

 is long and the floor thickly covered with it, it takes fowls too long to scratch 

 out their grain unless a considerable excess (over what is needed at the 

 time) of grain is thrown into the litter. Fowls cannot be fed evenly in this 

 way. If the litter is short it packs together, and the grain is not hidden when 

 thrown on it. Then, unless the grain is raked or forked into the litter, a 

 tiresome and tedious process, and unnecessary when the floor is managed 

 right it is eaten rapidly, and the fowls take too little exercise. Beginning 

 with a clean floor, as much litter should be put in as, when well scattered by 

 the fowls, will cover the floor loosely to a depth of four or five inches. As 

 soon as this is so broken that it packs, and does not conceal the grain scattered 

 on it, a little more should be added, and more, and more at regular intervals, 

 the object being to keep four or five inches of litter of such length that 

 grain thrown on it is nearly all hidden at once. After about a month from 

 the time the first litter was put in, the coarser stuff on top should be raked to 

 one side, and some of the finely broken, dusty stuff next the floor removed. 

 Once the floor is filled up right about an inch of fine but not too finely 

 broken litter next the floor, and three or four inches of coarse, loose litter 

 above it, it can be kept right by adding long litter once a week and remov- 

 ing broken litter about once a month. t 



* NOTE. Where there is not too much wet and snowy weather the yard, or a part of 

 it, can be used as the exercise-feeding ground. 



t NOTE. This will be about right when the floor space is five to six feet per hen. With 



