Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. '585 



I have kept an accurate account of the cost of food pur- 

 chased ; when I have fed them corn of my own raising, 

 I have charged them one dollar per bushel ; the whole 

 cost of food has been $99 75 



$83 32 



I had twenty bushels of hen manure (very clean), worth 



seventy -five cents per bushel • 15 00 



Profits on fiftv hens $98 32 



I have fed mv fowls almost exclusively on well cooked food, com- 

 posed of two parts cracked corn and one part oats with the addition 

 of about one pint of pork-cutter's scraps well broken up. I feed 

 them regularly three times each day, except in the winter, twice, and 

 sprinkle corn in the house for them through the day. I keep fresh, 

 clean water for them constantly. I found there was a saving of forty 

 to fifty per cent between cooked and raw food. I feed them on boards 

 prepared for the purpose and always *kept clean, which is a great sav- 

 ing of food. My boxes are one foot square, which in a great measure 

 prevents a second fowl from getting in the same box wdtli a sitting 

 hen. I procure one barrel of oyster shells at a tune, and roast them 

 moderately (not to burn them) as many as will fill a box (one peck),. 

 I have an iron box, used by malleable-iron founders to anneal cast- 

 ings and with an iron pounder (made for the purpose), I pound up 

 the roasted shells in the iron box, which my fowls always eat after 

 feeding, and if deprived of them, when again supplied they devour 

 ravenously. Cabbage leaves, salad, turnip tops and the refuse of 

 most vegetables they eat with great avidity. My fowls have the range 

 of one-half acre of ground, and the soil was taken from the surface in 

 the house and filled in with red sand, which is perfectly dry, in the 

 winter for them to wallow in. 



Dr. J. Y. C, Smith, in reply to these testimonies of practical and 

 successful poulterers, brought up medical philosophy. He did not 

 believe in having anything artificial about cliickens; this cooking 

 their food is contrary to the established rules of the faculty. Doctors 

 know it is all false and unnatural. ' Beside it is something undigni- 

 fied for a rational, intellectual being like man, made in the image 

 of his Creator, to be puttering over chicken dough and cooking the 

 food of animals, when that Creator has made them with a mill and a 

 Btove in their own economy to do their own cooking. 



