REPORT OF THE FARMERS* CLUB. 69 



" Shanghaes," or any other of the thousand-and-one humbugs of fancy 

 breeders. Get the old-fashioned, common, medium-sized fowls, and when 

 you have made a satisfactory experiment let us hear the result. 



The Chairman. — I think poultry-keeping is like strawberry-growing. 

 Twelve hens may be profitable, but twelve hundred would not be, nor fifty 

 either. I have often grown strawberries at the rate of four hundred bush- 

 els per' acre, but I never grew one hundred bushels upon one acre. 



Solon Robinson. — A friend told me to-day that seven hens produced this 

 spring one hundi'fed and twenty-six chickens; one hundred and twenty-five 

 of them are now alive and healthy. Last year eleven hens hatched one 

 hundred and ninety-two eggs and raised one hundred and eighty-six chick- 

 ens, the others being destroyed by the crows. 



Rev. Mr. Weaver. — I have known three hens to raise one hundred and 

 fifty chickens, though not all of them of their own hatching. Such hens 

 were profitable. 



Gapes in Chickens. 



Rev. Mr. Weaver. — As the subject of raising poultry is under discussion, 

 I would sa}'- that I never find any trouble about curing the gapes by the 

 horse-hair remedy — a horse-hair formed into a bow and inserted in the 

 windpipe of a chicken, and twisted about to loosen the worms. I never 

 have been troubled with this disease; I allow the chickens to remain two 

 or three days in the nest, feeding them with hard-boiled eggs, and then 

 never allow them on the damp or cold ground. Many chickens are killed 

 by lice. The remedy for that complaint is grease.' The main thing in 

 poultry-raising is to keep your chickens drj^, warm and clean, and well fed. 



"Surface Culture and Profits of Raising Poultry" was continued as the 

 subject of the next meeting. 



Adjourned. JOHN W. CHAMBERS, Secretarij. 



May 26, 1862. 



Mr. Edward Doughty, of Newark, N. J., in the chair. 



Mr. Robinson read a letter from Henry C. Wright, Pekin, N. Y., showing 

 what Paulina Roberts and her family of daughters have done on the farm 

 during the past year, from which we extract the following: 



"Their spring work was begun on the 19th of April, since which time 

 four of the daughters, aged respectively 19, 15, 13 and 11, assisted by a 

 niece aged It, and by their mother, have accomplished the following labor, 

 i. e. ; Plowed 15 acres; dragged 100 acres three times over; sowed broad- 

 cast 100, and rolled 100. More plowing has been done, but above amount 

 of labor has been done exclusively by the mother and the young daugh- 

 ters. They have now growing 45 acres of wheat, 15 of winter and 30 of 

 spring; 50 acres of oats; 30 acres of flax, and are to put in 10 acres of 

 corn; 10 of beans; three of carrots ; three-quarters of an acre of onions, and 

 10 acres of potatoes. 



"To-day I saw one of the daughters plowing, aged 13, holding the plow 

 and driving her own team. During the day she plowed one acre and a 



