HENS AS INCUBATORS. 79 



not confine them in quarters where you and your family could 

 not be comfortable. 



Most people, especially gentlemen who keep fowls as 

 amateurs for pleasure, kill them with kindness. I once 

 went to a poultry -house near Boston, the owner of which told 

 me his fowls were constantly dying. I found that the coop lice 

 were killing them. It was an elegant house, cost a great deal 

 of money, and was finished nicer than any room in my house. 

 The fowls, as the gentleman supposed, were well takeu care 

 of; every particle of manure was taken out, but the house 

 perfectly swarmed with lice. I saw them strung all along the 

 under side of the roosts, where they had gone to digest their 

 food during the day. These parasites do not live on the 

 fowls, but they feed on them at night, and leave them during 

 the day. I set a great many hens, and I never have any 

 trouble from lice. I have seventy-five setting on a very small 

 space, and have set in same room and same boxes for several 

 years, and keep hens in same room in winter, and they are 

 not troubled. A very little sulphur scattered in the nest two 

 or three times a week will keep them off. Take a handful, 

 begin at the tail of the hen when on the nest, let your fingers 

 touch the hen's feathers and move the hand towards the head, 

 letting the sulphur scatter from your hand ; the hen will raise 

 her feathers and the sulphur will strike her skin. 



There is another thing peculiar in my manner of raising 

 chickens. Seven years ago, I commenced making incubators 

 of hens. I lost a few until I learned how ; but for four years, 

 I have run from fifty to seventy-five of these incubator hens. 

 I have set them in February, and kept them at work until 

 August. The chickens, as soon as they are hatched, are 

 taken away from the hen, and placed in a clean box, in a 

 temperature of 100° to 103°, the bottom of the box covered 

 one-half with clean sand, suitable for the chicks to eat, and 

 the other half with flannel. They are allowed to run out in 

 small runs in the daytime. Chickens need only heat and 

 gravel for the first twelve hours, and then they will begin to 

 pick food. We feed the yolks of eggs, boiled hard and 

 mixed with Indian cakes baked hard and pounded up fine 

 (the first twenty-four hours they only need clear egg-} r olks 

 and sand), about one } : olk to a gill of fine cake. Feed often, 



