Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 299 



not to make the vinegar taste an j more than bugs, worms and tobacco 

 cuds in the apples. 



Profits or Poultry. 



Mr. W. C. Ludd, Yermillion, Erie county, Ohio. — From fiftj-six 

 hens, fourteen males, we had, in three months from January, 225 

 dozen eggs, at thirty cents per dozen, sixty-seven dollars and fifty 

 cents ; cost of feed twelve dollars. As the hens were worth twentj^- 

 fi.ve cents each, this is a profit of 370 per cent. I feed liberally a 

 mixture of corn, oats and buckwheat, pulverized raw bone, shell and 

 pure water always accessible. Also feed refuse meat and vegetables ; 

 also, a mush of provender and refuse scraps from the kitchen, scalded 

 in slops or sour milk. The fowls have a plenty of room, and warm 

 quarters in a conveniently aiTanged hennery. Xearly every leading 

 variety is superior to others in some one respect, and I am satisfied 

 that " blood " pays as well as in other stock. In the care of no kind 

 of stock is the maxim of " what is worth doing at all is worth doing 

 well," more applicable than in the management of poultry. 



Poultry Raisin'g as a Business. 



Mr. S. Edwards Todd. — One of the first questions that occurs to 

 the amateur farmer (by which word we mean the man who makes 

 better crops on paper than he does from the soil), is whether there is 

 not more money for the labor in the egg and chicken business than 

 in most other country modes of industry. The World has received 

 many letters of inquiry on the subject, and on the first of last Janu- 

 ary the American Institute suggested that letters giving accounts of 

 profitable gangs of hens, the cost of raising chickens and of producing 

 eggs, would be acceptable. These questions were responded to, and 

 many accounts were received of the profits of keeping twenty, forty, 

 fifty odd hens. But no reports from large poultry yards were received. 

 [N^obody could give an answer to the question whether 500 hens can 

 be kept on one farm with profit. In fact, it has been supposed to be 

 well nigh settled that chickens kept in great numbers are not apt to 

 do well ; that a poultry yard has a m^tural limitation, and that failure 

 is likely to attend an enterprise of such proportions as to make poultry 

 raising a business. If any man proposes to himself to go boldly into 

 the chicken line, we cannot give him better advice than to visit IsTew 

 York, stop at the Metropolitan Hotel, make the acquaintance of its 

 incomparable landlord, Warren Leland, and go with him to visit his 



