82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



and we find that a frozen turnip gives them considerable re- 

 spect for the clover crop. 



Our stock consists of two horses, one cow and at present 

 about three hundred hens. Most of our present flock of hens 

 were bought in the live poultry market in New York. We 

 watch these markets, and whenever an opportunity offers to 

 buy Brown Leghorn stock at fair prices, we generally buy 

 lots of forty or fifty. These hens cost us on an average of 

 thirty-nine cents each, which is cheaper than we can raise 

 them. We aim to follow the colony system, and keep our 

 hens in portable houses on various parts of the farm through 

 the winter. Our experience is that hens running upon the 

 crimson clover will pick up nearly thirty per cent of their 

 living from it. We feed them a mixed balanced ration, which 

 is easily supplied, and the greater part of the manure is 

 scattered over the field, where it will do the most good. The 

 hen manure saved from the houses is used as a filler for 

 making a home-made fertilizer. We use plaster under the 

 roosts, so that the manure is left hard and dry. It is kept 

 during the winter in a dry place, and usually comes out in 

 the spring in coarse, hard lumps. These are crushed and 

 smashed with a heavy spade and sifted through a coal screen, 

 so as to make it reasonably fine. A mixture of eight hun- 

 dred pounds of this hen manure and three hundred pounds 

 of nitrate of soda makes a good dressing for almost any crop 

 on our land. If used where the crimson clover was especially 

 heavy, we would drop out the cotton-seed meal and add one 

 hundred pounds more of dissolved rock and fifty pounds 

 more of muriate of potash. We have used a great deal of 

 basic slag or iron phosphate. This has been broadcasted on 

 the land at the time of sowing crimson clover or cow-peas. 

 In fact, we believe in using most of our potash and phos- 

 phoric acid on these green crops. The home mixture I have 

 mentioned is used chiefly in the drill, and generally not in 

 large quantities. 



I am aware, as I have stated several times, that this method 

 of farming is not appropriate or particularly helpful to the 

 large grower. I do believe, however, that it is along some 

 such line that the man of limited means must hope to succeed 

 upon the soil. And, while I have no quarrel with the large 



