110 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



pig and the hen ; and yet these are the first two to be shut up 

 in some dirty place and compelled to feed on filth. It is 

 utterly impossible to get the best results from any flock of 

 fowls shut up in a filthy, grassless confine, or let loose to run 

 at will. 1^0 man can get good eggs profitably unless his hens 

 can get grass or some reasonable substitute ; and the hen shut 

 up in a grassless pen cannot get it, and the one let loose to run 

 at will gets so crazy after bugs that often she does not know 

 enough to eat what she most needs. I would as soon let a 

 large flock of sheep run loose, and expect success, as a large 

 flock of hens; and even a few are a nuisance on the garden, 

 lawn or piazza. We pasture our hens, giving every laying hen 

 at least one-half square rod of good green grass ground ; and 

 whenever the season forbids this, — as in winter, — we feed 

 clover or alfalfa. There is no other stock on the small farm 

 that will pay as much with a little care as one hundred hens 

 in one flock, in one 10 by 40 foot house, with at least 50 square 

 rods of good pasture, and water and good dry mash before 

 them night and day all the time. 



The aA'erage farmer is stingy of fence, and shuts his flock 

 so close that he has to waste twice the cost of a good fence in 

 his own labor, trying to make them lay, and even then he often 

 fails ; or else he lets them loose, and after one or two months 

 of chasing and racing they follow nature and stop laying ; so 

 that about July he is ready to market his flock, and lose 

 the best two months in the whole year, August and September. 

 Let him treat them as well as he must his cow ; give them good 

 grass, and forage like rape in case of shortage ; sow rape in all 

 the rich bare spots in the worn-out yards ; in short, let him 

 treat them as the cow compels him to treat her in summer 

 time, if he gets any profitable returns, and for one-half the 

 care a cow will require, one hundred hens, from x\pril until 

 November, will give him double the profits of any cow on his 

 land. Three years ago, on Aug. 1, 190G, we bought one hun- 

 dred yearling hens for $50, the price of a good cow. Shutting 

 those hens in one flock in one long house, with good pasture 

 for one year, on Aug. 1, 1907, they had paid for all the grain 

 they had eaten and given a net surplus of just $112.40 ; and 

 from April 1 their care consumed scarcely five minutes of 



