No. 4.] POULTRY KEEPING. 113 



cheap butcher prices per pouiul, and drove home, saying to 

 ourselves : " That man does not know how to feed ; wait a 

 little, and see if they do not lay." A week passed with no 

 eggs ; then egg eaters were discovered, and had to be dealt 

 with. This gave a few eggs ; not many. So one after an- 

 other causes were removed, but that flock never laid well. 

 There was one beautiful hen, — I never saw a finer ; people 

 would pick her out, and remark on her beauty. I kept her 

 three months, and never saw her on the nest. At last came 

 the day when we were through setting eggs for hatching, and 

 one night we killed every cock bird on the farm, and hung 

 them down cellar in the cooler. Next morning at 4 o'clock 

 I was awakened from sleep by a clear, shrill *' Cock-a-doodle- 

 doo ! " I turned over sleepily, and tried to think which cock 

 had escaped me, when it came again, " Cock-a-doodle-doo ! " 

 as plainly pronounced as 1 ever heard it. I went out of doors 

 that morning to see my beautiful White Leghorn hen, which 

 another man and myself together had wintered, and so many 

 had admired for her fine comb, standing on a rock, crying 

 " Cock-a-doodle-doo ! " That hen was a hen ; I killed her, 

 and found an egg sack and ovaries, but wholly undeveloped ; 

 she had never laid an egg. Yes, she was a hen, and still not 

 a hen. 



That hen was a fine example of one of the most common 

 causes of failure to make poultry pay. In nearly every flock 

 there are certain individuals which do not pay expenses ; they 

 are not hens. A little while after this we found one flock of 

 hens, one hundred and sixty in one pasture, that only aver- 

 aged about forty eggs per day; feed as we would, we could 

 not increase this average. At last we went to that yard, and 

 for two days marked every hen that went to a nest, and then 

 marketed the other one hundred hens a few days later. That 

 sale did not diminish the average in any noticeable degree; 

 those sixty hens were doing all the work. I kept them two 

 years, and they did nobly; but the one hundred others were 

 eating all the profits, — they were not hens. With our pres- 

 ent high prices in grains, this is the first great reformation we 

 must work. The hens that will not lay profitably must be 

 taken from the flock, if we would succeed. To do this by 



