90S 



JOUKNiX OF HOKTICUXTrrEE AND COXTA&H GAEDENER. 



[ May 9, 18G5. 



heart, legs, and breastbones — they considerably help the 

 gravy to serve with it. We have wandered till we mnst 

 defer future remarks and advice. 



EE-\J{ES*G POULTPxY Df A COIN^FINED SPACE. 

 Hatixg read the several papers upon "Poultry-keeping 

 from a Commercial Point of View," and finding they have 

 ceased, I beg to submit a few hints for the benefit of your 

 readers, prompted by the perfectly theoretical style of those 

 papers. 



Before our friends go too deeply into the speculation, let 

 ua qnestion the most reasonable plan for keeping poultiy 

 from a " truly commercial point of view," and I think we 

 shall come to the conclusion that poultry may be kept with 

 a much more commercial and business-like aspect in every 

 home than is generally believed, and the enormous quan- 

 tity of a million eggs per day would not have to be im- 

 ported into this country. We need but to make it more uni- 

 versally known that poultry can be kept with profit in very 

 limited spaces, and in London as well as the country, and 

 show the public that by judicious care and feeding fowls will 

 positively thrive well and lay just as many eggs as the very 

 best yards in the country can boast of, and by so doing 

 induce a thousand persons to keep fowls where only one 

 person has hitherto done so. This, I maintain, is one way, 

 and a certain, practical way, of keeping poultry from a com- 

 mercial point of view, and by which the whole community 

 would benefit. 



There are very few houses in or out of London but what 

 have tolerable-sized yards, or pieces of ground sometimes 

 called gardens. If the sunny side of the smallest of these 

 plots were parted off, and a neat but inexpensive dry roost j 

 and run made for only a few birds — that is to say, no more ; 

 kept than would be required for eggs, and no cock allowed 

 if there were only one house and run, as breeding would 

 be of course quite out of character in such a case — further, 

 if the fiimUy were taught to feed, but not fatten, the fowls 

 thrice each day (and less if they did not pick up every grain 

 thrown to them, one meal being saved from the house 

 scraps properly cooked, and that meal prepared overnight, 

 BO that the scrap-meals might be all used up before any 

 thing which had to be purchased were given to them), i 

 this, I say and maintain, would be the surest way to pro- 

 cure a poultry company upon a truly commercial system 

 in every home, with but very limited liabilities and very 

 limited expenses. I am sorry to say I have found numbers 

 of persons commence keeping poultry and give up very 

 quixily in disgust, declaring i'aX each egg cost something 

 like Is. ; but I am happy to be able to add, that I have 

 prevented several from giving up who were about doing so. 

 I always found the causes as nearly as possible alike — that 

 the birds were not looked after often enough by the family 

 themselves. They were left to servants to feed them, who 

 threw down bowlsful of food, which became trodden under 

 foot and wasted. The fowls either became so fat that they 

 seldom, if ever, laid an egg, or else they sickened ; and as for 

 cleaning, this seldom or never occun-ed until the filtli accu- 

 mulated to such an extent as to become a nuisance. As for 

 dnst, gravel, old mortar rubbish, the fine-ash siftings from 

 the cinders — these sanitary additions were never thought of, 

 and often not understood. Of course, if some of these people 

 had on egg it was generally without a shell ; an occasional 

 sudden death occurred amongst the hens through over- 

 feeding, and, of cour.oe, all helped to deter families from 

 more generally keeping them. Then, again, with their 

 feeding, the green meat was not attended to. To economise 

 the greens, which every family can obtain more or less plen- 

 tifully, the proper plan is to pull off the leafy portions from 

 the stems or thick parts, and give the fowls as much as 

 they will eat; the remainder, together with the stems and 

 edililc portions of the etumps, should bo chopped up to about 

 the size of peas, and mixed with their prepared scrap-meal. 

 By scraps I mean refuse pieces of meat (after the bones 

 have been well scraped, give them to the fowls to polish, 

 which they will do most cleverly), every cmmb of bread, 

 and potato-peelings, which must be cooked. The meat, 

 whether fat, skin, gristle, or loan, may be cither raw or 

 cooked, no matter which. The whole of these being mixed 



will form theii- best meal, most nutritious, most economical, 

 and most conducive to egg-producing ; and if these mate- 

 rials should happen to mis a little too thin, add some barley 

 meal, but this expense all must try to avoid. The con- 

 sistence should be such as, when thrusting the hand in, the' 

 mixture will not moisten and stick to the fingers. All egg- 

 shells and other shells should be burnt in the fire, and when 

 the ashes are sifted and the refuse thrown to the fowls they 

 will pick out every minute particle of shell. This will assist 

 them in the formation of egg-shells, and materially help, 

 with other limey particles which must be mixed in the dust, 

 in keeping them in good condition. 



There is a small point in tkis method which should not 

 be overlooked — I mean the sifting of cinders. In every 

 house there is a considerable quantity of ash made, and 

 some coals make much more than others, but it is not in 

 every house that- you find a cinder-sifting box. If it is 

 insisted on, as an important duty on the part of the servants, 

 always to sift the cinders collected every morning when 

 clearing out the fireplaces, to throw the dust to the fowls, 

 for which they will show signs of thankfulness, and take 

 back to the house the large cinders for use, a visible reduc- 

 tion in the coal account wiU be perceptible in many families, 

 which must be placed to the credit of the fowls' account. 

 By adopting such a practice a dust-bin will not be required ; 

 a refuse comer may, for the purpose of storing the manure 

 for the flowers, if there is a garden ; or if a yard, a corner 

 is required also for broken crockery, &,c., and for hiding the 

 manure. 



How often has the question been put, and answered by 

 people themselves in the same breath, " My fowls used to 

 do well ; now they seem sickened, degenerate in size, weak 

 in productive powers. Is it," they ask, "because the 

 ground is tainted by them ?" This, I assure my friends, 

 is one of the principal answers to my queries why fowls 

 should not thrive in lai-ge numbers. The earth becomes 

 tainted by them ; they sicken of their runs ; they sicken 

 amongst themselves, disease surely creeps in, and they 

 droop and die ; and poultiy will not thrive well upon that 

 plot for at least two years. It is proved beyond all doubt 

 that no such a farm as M. Sora's or any other man's poultry 

 establishment ever existed, or does now exist, where chickens 

 are hatched by thousands and tens of thousands, and thou- 

 sands of hens are kept for laying eggs in one or on one 

 estate only ; and the hoi-se-feeding system was no greater 

 ruse than any other part of the plan once set forth. My 

 opinion of it was that the whole production was a mere idea 

 which the promoter thought a novel one, and he would just 

 startle the nations with it, and put it down as a howl fide 

 affair in black and white. I should say he was most likely 

 j one of the members of the Society of Horse-eaters (Hippo- 

 ! phagist), not very well pleased with his meal, so he enter- 

 tained a new idea of disposing of the remnants of their 

 feasts. 



In conclusion, I must add that I believe the plan adopted 

 in France for producing such lai'ge quantities is similar 

 to the plan I have proposed to a certain extent — that 

 there and in other countries greater numbers of separate 

 families keep poultry ; and that which tends to their suc- 

 cess is, that as they find the poultry help them to Uve, 

 they attend to them systematically ; and those persons 

 we call higglers go round regularly and collect the eggs 

 from them ; these, again, frequently sell the eggs to a 

 factor, who is the exporter. This I can fully believe is the 

 truly great poultry principle adopted in France and other 

 countries. 



With regard to the accounts of the hatcliing and reai-ing 

 of chickens by uiillions in Egypt by the Bermeans, I believe 

 fully in those accounts, but we are not in full possession of 

 all the facts in connection with theii- proceedings. I cannot 

 believe any one, nor one hundred, farms ever reared chickens 

 artificially in any such quantities ; so that I satisfy myself, 

 and I think many of your readers will do the same, by 

 believing that as the hatching of them by millions cannot 

 be disputed, we must conclude that numbers of farmers and 

 families came to these " niamals," as they were termed, 

 and purchased them, and brought them np as best they 

 could with the means thi.'y had at thou' disposal. Their 

 climate was pure, and in every way calculated to assist 

 i them in rearing tlieir birds artificially. They wore good 



