1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEP: CULTURE. 



rii 



think, perhaps, they would "catch their 

 death-cold," and they did not seem to die 

 very much either. I think Mrs. Hunter told 

 me they gather something like six or seven 

 dozen eggs every day. Of course, this was 

 an estimate. When I spoke about the ex- 

 pense of feed Mr. Hunter volunteered, "Why, 

 Mr. Root, we scarcely feed our grown-up 

 chickens anything fi'om along in April until 

 freezing weather comes." This does not mean 

 that they gather all their feed from the fields. 

 In disposing of their hundreds (or perhaps I 

 should say thousands ) of bushels of beautiful 

 corn, there is more or less scattered around 

 the coi'n-cribs in loading and unloading; and 

 the chickens make it a point to "gather up 

 the fragments that nothing be lost." Some 

 of the kernels of corn shelled from those 

 monstrous ears seemed to me to be almost 

 loo large for a chicken to swallow unless it 

 was some of the larger breeds. 



On our way to the station we stopped to 

 see the incubators belonging to my good 

 friend J. A. Scott, who brought me over from 

 the station. We tirst went down into the 

 cellar where they kept the incubators. When 

 the matter of testing the eggs came up, the 

 daughter, who has charge of the poultry, 

 showed me how they tested out the unfertile 

 eggs; and I then made a discovery — some- 

 thing that had not occurred to me before. 

 In order to get out the unfertile eggs (say in 

 3 days) before they were spoiled for table use 

 we older people would need to get some spec- 

 tacles of strong magnifying power. While 

 the young lady detected the embryo at once, 

 1 could not see it at all with the glasses I use 

 for every-day use. 



Now, 1 hope that these kind friends and 

 others where I have visited will excuse me 

 for a little criticism. I had just been admir- 

 ing friend Hunter's healthy handsome chick- 

 ens running loose here and there and every- 

 where during the cool morning hours. At 

 friend Scott's they had them housed up in 

 brooders or brooder-houses, with lamps burn- 

 ing to keep them warm. Well, I have found 

 this condition ineverygreat poultry establish 

 ment 1 nave visited in the Northern States. 

 They were warming chickens up with arti- 

 licial heat when it seemed to me they would 

 be ever so much better off, happier and hand- 

 somer, if they could get warm by the heat of 

 the sun or by running after their mothers 

 outdoors. At Xenia 1 saw chickens running 

 out in the rain, comparatively without harm, 

 when the thermometer showed a temperature 

 of 45 degrees. At friend Hunter's it was the 

 same; and this morning, May 1, my Rhode 

 Island Reds, only ten days old, were outdoors 

 as lively as crickets when it was cloudy, and 

 the thermometer was down to 40. Of course, 

 the mother warmed them up once in a while. 

 Friend Scott explained that his four or five 

 hundred chickens would have been outdoors 

 on the morning of my visit had it not been 

 for the fact that they had not got their poul- 

 try-netting up around the yards so they 

 could let them outside without getting mixed 

 up. 



Friend Hunter is a jovial man, as you 



may gather from his looks. Every little while 

 he was getting off some of his jokes. When 

 I said I felt that I must get around to see 

 some of those wheat-fields during the harvest- 

 time he replied, with great gravity, "Mr. 

 Root, you certainly ought to come, for it is 

 indeed at tivaes?^ shocking sight." At another 

 time he put his finger on a piece of poultry- 

 netting and said, "When testing these ears 

 of seed corn, just cut out a piece of poultry- 

 netting and lay it on top of your box of dirt, 

 then you take the six grains from each ear 

 of corn and put them inside of one of the 

 meshes of poultry-netting." 



Then he added, "Now here is another 

 short cut for you chicken-men." 



As he said this he turned to his neighbor 

 Scott with a comical look, "You want to get 

 a good post-auger and dig a deep hole some- 

 where near your brooder. Cover it with a 

 round board orsomethingof thekind. When 

 you find a dead chicken just drop it in this 

 deep hole and put on the cover. It is less 

 trouble than to dig a place to bury the chick- 

 ens one by one as fast as they die." 



This last suggestion hit me in a spot where 

 I felt a little sore, for there was one time in 

 Florida when I found it quite a little task to 

 dig so many "burying-places" for each dead 

 chicken. Mine did not have any disease, 

 however. I had no losses except those that 

 were induced by the coal-oil lamp of that 

 chick-brooder I told you about. Perhaps I 

 am taking a big responsibility on myself, es- 

 pecially while 1 know so little about modern 

 poultry-keeping, to undertake to criticise 

 those who raise chickens by the thousand; 

 but I can not help thinking, again and again, 

 that more pco])le and chickens are killed by 

 warmed-up houses and artificial heat than 

 because of exposure to the weather and a lack 

 of protection. Of course, we want to keep 

 warm — chickens as well as people; and old 

 chickens as well as old people, perhaps, should 

 avoid being chilled — that is, chilled iu a harm- 

 ful way. But I think we both need to be- 

 ware how we try to substitute artificial heat 

 for sunshine, outdoor air, and exercise. 



Before closing let me get back to the corn 

 once more. On page 45 of our issue for Jan. 

 1 I told you how our station was getting a 

 strain of corn that would not blow down 

 during high wind^. Well, Mr. Hunter has 

 been working along tne same line. But he 

 adds something like this: "It is true we can 

 produce a strain of corn with stalks so strong 

 that they will stand ordinary blows; and 

 this very thing illustrates something we have 

 met in developing desirable tr dts in corn or 

 any other plant. We gi/t a .strong stalk, it 

 is true; but it is more or less at the expense 

 of the ear of corn. If you wish to grow fod- 

 der, get a big strong stalk with little or r.o 

 ears: but for grain the strong stalks must 

 not be pushed too far. A strain of corn 

 that produces a good-sized ear, not too high 

 up from the ground, and an ear that soon 

 turns over and hangs down by its own 

 weight, with a reasonably strong stalk to 

 support it, is what we want rather than to 

 lay so much stress in our experiments in 



