130 POULTRT-CRAFT. 



the earliest period of laying, a pullet is usually making growth of bone, 

 muscle and feathers, and producing eggs at the same time. The eggs are of 

 necessity small, and it is a good plan to postpone laying until the bird is well 

 developed. This can be done by shifting the pullets frequently from pen to 

 pen. 



As the mean temperature of the atmosphere falls lower and lower, more and 

 more of the food consumed goes to keep up the heat of the body. The mash 

 should be a rich one, heavy in corn meal and meat and fed warm. Corn 

 can be fed quite freely, and provision made for a constant and liberal supply 

 of cut bone or meat scraps. For feeding at this time no better vegetable than 

 cabbage can be found, and split and damaged cabbage can be had at this 

 season for the hauling, or for a merely nominal price. Sound cabbages are 

 often very cheap, and if one who cannot grow them himself is prepared to 

 buy what he needs for the winter now, cabbages may be about as cheap a 

 green food as can be had ; bought later, they will probably cost several times 

 the fall price. It would, of course, be possible to keep the fowls comfortable 

 in cool weather by giving less heating food, and closing the houses up more 

 at night ; but that system tends to keep fowls soft ; while, as long as the 

 weather is not too cold, heating food and a cool house harden, while keeping 

 them comfortable. 



Now as long as the weather continues fine and quite uniform, though slowly 

 growing colder, both hens and pullets will do so well that the poultryman 

 will begin to make estimates of what the egg yield will be by Thanksgiving 

 Day, at the present rate of increase. 



Then possibly there comes a sudden fall in the temperature a fall of 50 

 to 60 Fahrenheit in a few hours, is not unusual at this season and a change 

 of 80 may occur inside of twenty-four hours. The demand of the body for heat 

 is enormously increased. If the poultryman can now keep his fowls warm 

 enough so that there is no sudden check to egg production, all is well. If the 

 cold snap is of short duration, everything goes on as before. If the weather 

 remains permanently cooler, one has only to take better care of the hens for a 

 few days until they become accustomed to the change : as healthy hens do 

 very quickly ; but if the poultryman fails to make such provision as is in his 

 power to counteract the effect of the change in the weather ; or, if the fall in 

 temperature is so great as to check laying in spite of all that he can do, the 

 effects of the change do not pass away with the return to settled warmer 

 weather, and if changes follow each other rapidly, numerous slight shocks 

 have sometimes a worse effect than one extreme shock. In many cases the 

 shock to the system of the hen does not end with the stoppage of egg produc- 

 tion. Consider what laying is what an egg is. Consider how any shock to 

 an animal organism acts upon the reproductive system, and this effect in turn 

 reacts upon the whole system. Similar instances are numerous in other lines 

 of animal life. When a change of weather causes a hen to stop laying, there 

 will be no more eggs laid until the system has had time to recuperate. The 

 time needed is long or short, as the shock to the system was more or less 



