570 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apr. 15 



We are bothered by ants in the house pan- 

 try, getting into sugar and cake and pies. I 

 take a square board and put four two-inch 

 screws in the corners for legs, then paint the 

 under side of the board and the screws. 

 Jars and boxes may be set on the board, but 

 they must be away from the wall so that the 

 ants can't climb up and get in that way. 



Corydon, Pa. Geo. Whitcomb. 



Notes 05 Trs^vel 



By A.I. ROOT 



POULTEY-RAISING INDOORS AND OUTDOORS. 



While writing up my experiments on my 

 Florida island, I told you I had decided to 

 visit some of the large poultry establish- 

 ments. The first one I ran across on my 

 trip was in the suburbs of Tampa, Florida. 

 This is four miles out on a trolley line. As 

 you near the place a large bulletin-board 

 very tastily gotten up tells you this is "Stu- 

 art's Tampa Bay Poultry Farm." Right 

 along the side of the car-track are specimens 

 of their fine poultry, with nothing but poul- 

 try-netting to cut them off from the car-track. 

 From the side of the hill that slopes down 

 from the car-track to the bay are baby chicks 

 by the hundx-eds if not thousands. The pro- 

 prietors have evidently decided very much 

 as I did, that the mother-hen is ahead of any 

 brooder yet devised; therefore their chicks 

 are nearly all in charge of a hen, each hen 

 being allowed from 30 to 40 chickens. Un- 

 less given considerable room there are likely 

 to be "differences" between the different 

 mothers; and one mother-hen that was part 

 game had already been guilty of killing 

 chickens that belonged to some other hen; 

 so we may have to go a little slow on the 

 "fighting-mother" business. 



The mothei's with very small chicks are 

 kept by themselves, and protected by wire- 

 netting of only one-inch mesh. Any thing 

 larger will let baby chicks get through, and 

 they sometimes get stuck in the meshes, 

 especially if you undertake to use the \\ or 

 1^ mesh. 



This establishment has the nicest watering- 

 arrangement I have ever seen. They have 

 their own waterworks, and the water is car- 

 ried everywhere in pipes. Well, these pipes 

 are so arranged that water is constantly 

 dropping slowly into a little cup elevated 

 above the ground as much as possible and 

 yet give the little chicks a chance to drink. 

 Dropping water means pure water and clean 

 drinking-utensils. It is exactly on the plan 

 I told you about a year ago, of letting the 

 water drop from my barrelful of rain-water 

 into a clamshell. 



In the beautiful climate about Tampa, lit- 



tle or no shelter is needed. In fact, I am 

 not sure that every mother-hen has a shelter 

 to get under during a severe rainstorm; and 



1 know by experience that there is seldom 

 any trouble with a hen and chickens in that 

 region, even during a storm. Perhaps it 

 would be safer, however, to have a hen and 

 fiock of chickens placed where they will be 

 pretty sure to find shelter in case of a sud- 

 den and severe storm. 



Well, while this establishment runs a dozen 

 or more incubators they also make use of 

 sitting hens for hatching eggs. Each hen 

 with her nest of eggs is enclosed in a little 

 yard containing water, feed, and a dusting- 

 place, on the plan of the "natural-hen incu- 

 bator" that I wrote about awhile ago. This 

 poultry-farm has twenty different varieties 

 of fowls, all, of course, in that many differ- 

 ent yards. At the Florida State fair last 

 fall their stock won 80 prizes. They agreed 

 with me that it was desirable to have every 

 thing out of doors as much as possible, not 

 only to keep the fowls healthy, but to get rid 

 of every thing that can foster vermin and 

 disease. They have settled down on dry 

 mash for a feed, like most other large estab- 

 lishments of the present day, if I am correct. 

 Their feeding- apparatus is so simple that I 

 will describe it here. Get a shallow box at 

 the grocery, of any convenient size, not over 

 three or four inches deep. Fill the box half 

 full or more with the dry mash; then, to pre- 

 vent the hen from getting in and scratching 

 it to the four winds, a piece of poultry- net- 

 ting with a 1-inch mesh is dropped on top of 

 the feed. For convenience in handling this 

 piece of netting, a strip of wood is tacked 

 across each end. The hens can reach down 

 through and pick up the feed, but they can 

 not scratch it. 



To prevent their droppings from getting 

 into the feed this box is pushed under a shelf 

 or nest-box in the building. Of course, there 

 is a space over the top of the box for hens to 

 reach over. If used in the open air, a little 

 roof is put over the box, of sufficient slope 

 so the fowls can not sit on top of it. This 

 roof is supported on legs or posts high 

 enough for the hens to get their heads under. 



As I was curious to know about the grains 

 used for their dry mash, the superintendent 

 kindly furnished me the following formula: 



Mr. Root: — I promised you my dry-mash mixture, 

 which is as follows: Wheat bran, 22 lbs.; wheat 

 shorts, 17 lbs.; clover or alfalfa meal, 18 lbs.; feed 

 meal, 17 lbs.; granulated milk, 20 lbs.; salt, H lb.; 

 blood meal, U, lb.; cotton-seed meal, 1 lb.; charcoal, 



2 lbs.; fine bone, 2 lbs. Total, 100 lbs. 



Tampa, Fla., Mar. 23. Geo. L. Clemens.* 



Perhaps I might mention that, at different 

 times in my life, I have been deterred from 

 keeping poultry because the premises are 

 generally sure to become untidy and foul- 

 smelling; but it was one of my happy sur- 

 prises to find that this great poultry estab- 

 lishment was so nicely managed that there 

 was almost nothing oft"ensive either to the 

 eye or nostril anywhere on the premises. 



* Mr. Clemens is also superintendent as well as sec- 

 retary and treasurer of the Florida State Poultry 

 Association. 



