22 



prospective poultryman has a small flock and they have laid 

 well. He begins to reason like this : "I have kept twelve hens 

 in the pen the past year and they have netted me $2.00 apiece. 

 All I have to do to increase my income is to increase the num- 

 ber of my birds. If twelve hens have paid $24, fifty hens will 

 pay me $100." This seems logical, and the prospective poultry- 

 man goes to work and puts in fifty birds, only to find at the 

 end of the year that the fifty birds have not paid him so well 

 as the twelve did. They have laid no more eggs, and sickness 

 has been rife among them. More men lose money and retire 

 from the poultry business in disgust from losses brought about 

 by putting too many birds into one pen than from any other 

 cause. 



The farmer would not think of putting two cows in one 

 stall. He would not plant his potatoes in rows one foot apart. 

 He would not shut up his family in one room. Why should he 

 not display the same good sense in dealing with his fowls? 

 Experience has shown that 10 square feet of floor space is 

 about the amount needed by each hen if she is to do her best. 

 Where the house is kept perfectly clean, and where the hens 

 have a chance to get out of doors every pleasant day, they can 

 get along with a somewhat smaller space. But for the best 

 results in egg producing there must be plenty of room. The 

 year I made the phenomenal record with my White Wyan- 

 dottes 214 eggs apiece from October to October I knocked 

 out the partitions between two pens and gave the flock double 

 room. 



DUST BATH. 



Provide your hens with a dust bath. They will spend many 

 happy hours wallowing in the warm earth and will keep them- 

 selves reasonably free from lice. But do not trust to the dust 

 bath entirely, for in the dead of winter the bath is often so cold 

 that the biddies will not use it, and then lice will get in their 

 work. Soil out of the garden, sifted through a common coal 

 sieve, makes the best material for a dust bath that I know any- 

 thing about. Next to this I rank coal ashes. The bath tub 

 may be a sugar barrel, sawed off about a foot from the bottom 

 and set in a sunny place, or one of those shallow square boxes 

 that cereal foods come in, which may generally be obtained of 

 the grocer for the asking. 



EXERCISE. 



Hens need a reasonable amount of exercise. They do not 

 need to be kept on the jump from morning until night, but they 



