62 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



with a fresh supply of soil twice each year. The fertilizer thus 

 manufactured will be found excellent for all root-crops, espe- 

 cially onions and carrots. 



If the flock is to be confined, and on the least practical 

 amount of ground, each house and shed will need two yards, 

 two rods wide and ten rods long; the two being necessary, so 

 that while one is in use the other can be sowed down to forage 

 crops, thus furnishing the fowls with raw vegetable food, — 

 as much a necessity as grass for the cow, to secure the best 

 results. 



In constructing these conveniences for your fowls, do not 

 think you can get along without the open shed, for experience 

 teaches that for a large production of eggs and security of 

 their hatching when set, that the fowls must have the open 

 air daily ; and a shed that protects them from the storm and 

 driving winds in winter, and furnishes a cool retreat in sum- 

 mer, will prove a most judicious expenditure. These numbers 

 and fixtures can be augmented to any number required, but 

 each fifty should be a community of itself. Add no more 

 than you can care for as well as you do the first fifty you 

 start with, and on which you have based your calculation of 

 success. The many failures are to be attributed to neglect 

 and failure to care for the many, with a generosity correspond- 

 ing to that given the first few. 



The feed for fowls thus confined may consist of boiled 

 vegetables (parsley, cabbage, squash, seed-cucumbers and 

 potatoes), mashed with wheat-bran and corn-meal, while hot; 

 feeding the same at the morning meal in such quantities as 

 will be eaten up by nine o'clock, allowing the flock to forage 

 till four or five o'clock, when a full feed of small grain and a 

 small portion of corn may be fed to them, adding to the 

 morning meal fresh ground scraps or meat in some form, 

 three days in each week. This will be found sufficient till 

 the frost prevents the further growing of forage crops ; then 

 change the feed to what soft food they will eat up at the 

 morning meal, — small grains, sunflower seed, etc., at noon, 

 and what corn they eat at evening. This will maintain the 

 most even animal heat for the twenty-four hours ; it being 

 health and heat that produce the eggs, the hen being 

 simply a machine which, if carefully run, must produce the egg 



