149 



my customers the quality of that which he is receiving. By way of 

 emphasis I enclose a neatly printed card guaranteeing every egg to be 

 as represented. Eggs so arranged for the market will net me at least 

 five cents above the regular market price. I have a great demand 

 for young dressed chicks among my egg customers, and these pay me 

 an average of twenty cents per pound. 



A FEW NOTES. 



A five-acre farm is a one-man farm, and with everything ar- 

 ranged as it is, I only need to hire a young man to help me about half 

 the time. I do not expect to raise much in the way of grain ; I expect 

 to have plenty of green food for my chickens in the fall and winter. 

 When I haven't green food I will sprout oats or something on that 

 order. In the garden I will raise all the vegetables and small fruits 

 needed for my own use, after three years my fruit trees will begin to 

 bear, and then I will have a little more revenue. The use of the orchard 

 as a poultry run will be good for both the orchard and the chickens, 

 the trees furnishing shade for the chickens and they in turn catch 

 worms, bugs, etc., that would eventually damage the trees. The oats, 

 wheat and rye will never be threshed, but used as scratching ma- 

 terial for litter, thus compelling the chickens to work for their grain. 

 In this way very little scratching material will be bought. Scratch- 

 ing material, when removed from pens, will be thrown in the manure 

 shed and mixed with the manure. I will have plenty of manure to 

 keep my fields up in shape. The manure when dry makes as good 

 fertilizer as one would want. It could be sold in cities for a dollar a 

 barrel, but I would never sell it, always finding use for it on my place. 

 When chickens are killed they will be dry picked and the feathers 

 saved. 



Air-slacked lime will be used on yards and in houses. Houses 

 will be sprayed regularly to keep down lice and make the sanitary 

 conditions better. Roosts will be painted once a week with coal oil 

 and crude carbolic acid. 



I will keep one horse, hiring all heavy plowing. I will not keep 

 a cow unless I can pasture her some place near, but will buy sour milk 

 and buttermilk for my poultry. 



PIANO BOX COLONY HOUSES. 



My colony houses are made of piano boxes. Take two boxes and 

 place upright with their backs to each other, but two feet apart. The 

 backs are removed and this lumber used to complete the roof, the 

 floor and the back of the house, a door being made to fit the opening 

 in the front of the house. The door is merely a frame covered with 

 one-inch mesh poultry wire to exclude animals at night. The roof and 

 sides of the building are covered with Pariod roofing. It makes a 

 house five and a half by seven feet. I have two of these houses on 

 runners that I use for hospitals. This makes an ideal house that is 

 half built when you get the boxes. 



